David and Goliath

by

Malcolm Gladwell

Joanne Jaffe is a police officer who, when put in charge of New York City’s Housing Bureau, institutes a new way of addressing juvenile crime in the neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn. Brownsville is notorious for its high crime rate, so Jaffe compiles a list of all juvenile offenders arrested in the last year for mugging, then reaches out to each and every one of them and speaks to their families, saying that they’ve been enrolled in the Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program (J-RIP). This means that the police will keep close tabs on these young people, though they’ll also do whatever they can to help them succeed. Before long, this approach begins to work, especially when Jaffe and her officers start bringing Thanksgiving turkeys to J-RIPpers’ houses and holding toy drives at Christmas. Within three years, the crime rate among J-RIPpers plummets. Gladwell attributes this to Jaffe’s understanding that it matters what people think of authority figures. Rather than trying to assert power without caring what young people think of law enforcement, Jaffe goes out of her way to build meaningful relationships, proving that Leites and Wolf were wrong to think that authority figures can succeed without listening to the people over whom they hope to preside.

Joanne Jaffe Quotes in David and Goliath

The David and Goliath quotes below are all either spoken by Joanne Jaffe or refer to Joanne Jaffe. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Advantages and Disadvantages Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8: Wilma Derksen Quotes

This is what Jaffe was talking about in Brownsville. The damage she was trying to repair with her hugs and turkeys wasn’t caused by an absence of law and order. It was caused by too much law and order: so many fathers and brothers and cousins in prison that people in the neighborhood had come to see the law as their enemy.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Joanne Jaffe
Page Number: 246
Explanation and Analysis:
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Joanne Jaffe Quotes in David and Goliath

The David and Goliath quotes below are all either spoken by Joanne Jaffe or refer to Joanne Jaffe. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Advantages and Disadvantages Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8: Wilma Derksen Quotes

This is what Jaffe was talking about in Brownsville. The damage she was trying to repair with her hugs and turkeys wasn’t caused by an absence of law and order. It was caused by too much law and order: so many fathers and brothers and cousins in prison that people in the neighborhood had come to see the law as their enemy.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Joanne Jaffe
Page Number: 246
Explanation and Analysis: