America's Safest City: Delinquency and Modernity in Suburbia
Simon I. Singer
Winner of the American Society of Criminology 2015 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology Since the mid-1990s, the fast-growing suburb of Amherst, NY has been voted by numerous publications as one of the safest places to live in America. Yet, like many of America’s seemingly idyllic suburbs, Amherst is by no means without crime—especially when it comes to adolescents. In America’s Safest City, noted juvenile justice scholar Simon I. Singer uses the types of delinquency seen in Amherst as a case study illuminating the roots of juvenile offending and deviance in modern society. If we are to understand delinquency, Singer argues, we must understand it not just in impoverished areas, but in affluent ones as well.
Award History
0 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| PROSE Award for Anthropology and Sociology | 2016 | Honorable mention | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
- Amherst, NY82%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- America38%
03 Suggested argument
Understanding delinquency requires examining affluence as well as poverty; if we want to understand juvenile offending and deviance, we must study it in affluent suburbs like Amherst.
Model confidence 78%
04 Reading orientation
62 / 100 academicAcademic
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 77%.