Crimes that changed our world : tragedy, outrage, and reform / Paul H. Robinson and Sarah M. Robinson.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1911 Triangle factory fire : building safety codes -- 1915 chloroform killer : medical examiners -- 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping and Dillinger robberies : federalization of criminal law enforcement -- 1937 sulfanilamide crisis : drug safety -- 1956 NYC mad bomber : criminal profiling -- 1957 Mafia Commission Apalachin meeting : Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) -- 1962 Harlem heroin epidemic : war on drugs -- 1964 Genovese murder witness scandal : 911 emergency system -- 1965 Watts riots & Texas sniper : SWAT and the militarization of police -- 1967 Calabrese intimidation : WITSEC -- 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire : Environmental Protection Agency -- 1972 TWA bombing and hijackings : airport security -- 1980 killing of Cari Lightner : drunk driving -- 1981 Reagan assassination attempt : insanity defense -- 1983 Beirut barracks bombing : internationalization of the FBI -- 1983 Thurman beatings : domestic violence -- 1986 Leicestershire murders : DNA -- 1989 Schaeffer stalking murder : stalking offense -- 1993 Polly Klaas abduction : three-strikes sentencing -- 2001 9/11 attacks : War on terror -- 2001 Enron scandal : financial crimes.

Can crime make our world safer? Crimes are the worst of humanity's wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes "trigger" improvement in our lives. Crimes That Changed Our World explores some of the most important trigger cases of the past century, revealing much about how change comes to our modern world. The exact nature of the crime-outrage-reform dynamic can take many forms, and Paul and Sarah Robinson explore those differences in the cases they present. Each case is in some ways unique but there are repeating patterns that can offer important insights about what produces change and how in the future we might best manage it. Sometimes reform comes as a society wrestles with a new and intolerable problem. Sometimes it comes because an old problem from which we have long suffered suddenly has an apparent solution provided by technology or some other social or economic advance. Or, sometimes the engine of reform kicks into gear simply because we decide as a society that we are no longer willing to tolerate a long-standing problem and are now willing to do something about it. As the amazing and often touching stories that the Robinsons present make clear, the path of progress is not just a long series of course corrections; sometimes it is a quick turn or an unexpected lurch. In a flash we can suddenly feel different about present circumstances, seeing a need for change and can often, just as suddenly, do something about it. Every trigger crime that appears in Crimes That Changed Our World highlights a societal problem that America has chosen to deal with, each in a unique way. But what these extraordinary, and sometime unexpected, cases have in common is that all of them describe crimes that changed our world. -- Provided by publisher.

Many aspects of modern life, from drug safety to fire codes, have come not from the sustained efforts of government bureaucrats but rather from the flash and sizzle of a tragic crime and the public outrage it provokes. This book is about those trigger crimes and how they have changed our world.