Decade - 1990s

The 1990s was a time of positive transition in New York City. The city began the decade in economic ruin and social despair, and ended it in prosperity and relative social harmony.

New York City's problems began long before the 1990s. The city had a very serious crime problem that began in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and lasted through the early 1990s. The city also went bankrupt in the 1980s, and then-President Gerald Ford refused to provide economic relief, prompting the now-famous New York Daily News headline, "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

It was a time of "high crime and low morale" (to quote some journalist whose name I don't remember). People were afraid to walk the streets at night. In many neighborhoods, it was not safe to walk the streets in broad daylight. This period -- from the late 1960s through the early 1990s -- is where the persistent stereotype of New York as a crime-infested, urban wasteland comes from.

Even though things have changed a lot since then, people still think of New York they way they did in the 70s and 80s: as a ruthless, savage and cutthroat place, where you could be assaulted or murdered in broad daylight and people would step over your body without a second glance, a vicious place where people treat each other like garbage and nobody helps anybody but themselves. Of course, this is an exaggeration. It was never literally that bad -- it was still a city, not a war zone -- but it was not a safe place, and people were jaded and fearful.

In the 1980s, the country's "crack epidemic" took its toll on New York City, compounding the city's existing crime problem. Cocaine was by far the most popular drug in the 1980s. It was considered fashionable and glamorous by the middle and upper class. In the 80s, it was the drug of choice for the elite. If you were wealthy, successful, and part of the social scene in the 1980s, you were probably doing cocaine. Pretty much everyone who partied in the white collar world partied with cocaine.

Poor people weren't doing cocaine, though, because cocaine is very expensive. Hence, the invention of crack. Crack was invented in the late 1970s, and quickly became the drug of choice for the destitute and desperate. Crack is a cheaper form of cocaine (it is essentially just cocaine and baking soda boiled together with a few other household ingredients). It was created to be cheaper than cocaine, and to burn better than cocaine, so you can smoke it more easily.

Smoking crack provides an intense, yet very short-lived, rush of euphoria. This euphoria only lasts a few minutes, and then you start craving more crack. The cravings are even more intense than the preceding high. When a person runs out of crack, they will do ANYTHING to get more, including robbing people. Crack is also a powerful stimulant that makes a person paranoid, aggressive and potentially violent, so they are more likely to assault or kill the people they rob (and anyone else who stands in their way).

All of this is true of regular cocaine as well. But regular cocaine is expensive, so it was only popular among those who could afford to buy it, and who could also afford to buy themselves beds in fancy rehab centers if they got too out of control with it. So regular cocaine didn't cause the widespread crime and other social problems that crack cocaine did. The wealthy and elite considered cocaine to be glamorous, and viewed crack as "ghetto," a poor person's drug.

While crack is cheaper, it is still an expensive addiction, because you are always craving more of it. You might start out buying $40 worth of crack, but when you run out of that, you'll want another $40 worth, and then another, and another, ad infinitum. A crack addict ALWAYS wants more crack, and they want it more than anything in the world. With so many of the city's poor strung out on crack, the crime problem worsened exponentially. The city was full of violent, aggressive addicts who spent their days smoking crack and robbing people to get more crack.

All of this began to change in the early-to-mid 1990s. The U.S. economy took an upward swing, and as the 90s progressed, New York became more and more prosperous. Crime rates also plummeted. In the 1980s, New York had over 2,000 homicides each year. By the year 2000, the number of homicides had dropped to 673. Since 2007, the number of homicides has held steady in the upper 400s to low 500s. Currently, New York is the safest major U.S. city.

The reason for the dramatic drop in crime over the last two decades is hotly debated. Mayor Guiliani (who served from 1994 through 2001) and his then-Police Commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, have credited their tough-on-crime, "zero tolerance policy," but the crime rates had already started dropping under Mayor Dinkins (who served from 1990 through 1993). Dinkins had increased the number of NYPD officers, an initiative that continued under Mayor Guiliani. Critics of Guiliani argue that his methods -- which included cracking down on misdemeanors and nuisance crimes -- clogged up the system and diverted efforts from real crimes.

Nor was the drop in crime exclusive to New York City. As a whole, the United States experienced a significant drop in crime which has steadily continued to the present day, even while the nation is amidst a crushing recession. Whatever the reasons, New York City's drop in crime seems to have been part of a larger trend going on in the country as a whole.

The drug world undoubtedly played a part in the overall reduction in crime across the country. Cocaine and crack fell out of favor in the 90s, and heroin once again became the popular drug of choice. Heroin is still a dangerous and destructive drug, and people do steal to fund their heroin addiction, but because it is a depressant (not a stimulant like cocaine) it does not make people violent, paranoid and aggressive. People high on heroin can barely stand up, let alone run around robbing, looting and killing. When a person runs out of heroin, they fall asleep for 12 hours and wake up sober. When a person runs out of crack (or even regular cocaine) they are wide-awake and craving more, which makes them go out and do whatever they have to do to get more.

Some sociologists have proposed another reason for the drop in crime: the legalization of abortion. The landmark Roe v. Wade decision took place in 1973. They theorize that women who were not in a fit state to raise children (because of poverty, drug addiction, involvement with crime, and violent home lives) were able to abort their pregnancies, when before they would have been forced to have the children. Children who come from this kind of background are the most likely to become criminals. Women in these bad situations were able to abort their pregnancies, meaning less children were born into these bad situations, and therefore there were less of them growing up to be criminals.

New York City began the 1990s in a perpetual state of despair, fear, and hopelessness. By the end of the 1990s, New Yorkers were taking pride in their city again. Economic prosperity coupled with plummeting crime rates raised the city's morale to the point where people were no longer afraid of each other. Instead of being afraid to walk the streets, people began to enjoy their city and all the activities and sights it offers. Instead of walking around with their heads down, afraid to help or "get involved" in what other people were doing, people became more open and willing to engage and converse with strangers. New York got its humanity back and became a great place to live again.