[3] Abt favors an approach to crime prevention that emphasizes eliminating violence directly, rather than focusing on its other associations, which include such things as poverty, gangs and drugs, and his 2019 book substantiates this claim with an extensive review of the data.

[4] Abt began his career after graduating law school in 2000 as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office for four years,[1] then shifting to litigation as an associate with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison from 2004 to 2008.

Abt is a former member of the advisory board of the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge, and he is also a former senior fellow with the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In November 2022, it was announced that Abt would join the University of Maryland's department of criminology and criminal justice, where he would serve as an associate research professor and founding director of a new venture, the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction.

[6][7][8] His work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and on MSNBC, PBS, National Public Radio, among other places.