Freakonomics also talked about the “Broken Window” theory, but discounted it as a basis for the drop in crime based on a couple of observations: the drop began before the “broken window” policies did, and crime rates dropped by equivalent amounts in cities not implementing them. They did make New York a much nicer place though.
They also covered the crack issue, and said it was a major contributor to falling crime rates, if not the major one. It’s not that crack has gone away, but that the dealers fighting for territory have switched tactics from killing their rivals, to merely maiming them. The maimings probably do go under-reported.
The book Freakonomics covers the hypothesis pretty well, and mentions some studies that examine it in more detail. I don’t have my copy here with me though.
Not that I’m saying cleaning up subway cars is pointless. I’m not saying it has zero effect, either. Just that pointing to shiny subway cars as a major contributing factor in a 75% decrease in homicides over 20 years is ridiculous.
I cannot extrapolate from one story in one municipality from two cops that the whole world works that way. I’m not saying it does or doesn’t but that the one story means naught.
And yes, if it was a slow crime day, that means something - plus the incident you mention is NOT a crime. I hate disruptive teenagers as much as anybody but teenagers simply hanging around an abandoned lot is now something the cops need to come out for? Seriously? Why is it even important? They didn’t break in or trash it so you called the cops merely to report their existence? Those cops had better not come out if they have more important things to do, like an actual crime.
Yes, and I agree that was probably a factor. It was mentioned in post 19 though, so I didn’t bring it up again. Also, it’s the one Freakonomics conjecture that everyone seems to know about already.
But he’s not wrong. When police activity is aggressive and the wait to have a complaint processed and addressed, crime reporting goes up even with a constant or reduced level of crime. When police presence is reduced and complaints take weeks to process or are dismissed below a certain threshold, crime stats go down even as criminal activity is increasing. It should also be noted that what is considered crime and how crimes are classified changes dramatically through years, making normalization of crime stats across several decades and different regions problematic.
As an example, many domestic incidents resulting in assault or non-traumatic battery were considered minor misdemeanors prior to the 1980s, whereas now they’re considered on par with aggravated assault with a progressive scale of severity. Restraining orders used to be a very difficult and time-consuming order to receive, and so the number of injunctions issued for potentially violent behavior was small. Now, most major municipalities offer temporary restraining orders that can be levied for a limited period ex parte (without formal representation by the object party) and so if you count TROs as part and parcel of all injunctions, there would be a massive increase.
One particular influence of note is the “War On Drugs”. Beginning with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, the federal government made a systematic effort to criminalize the manufacture, distribution, sale, and use of many classes of controlled substances. This created both a large amount of perceived crime (by distributors and users), and real crime (prohibition-related violence and monetary crime) that did not previously exist in any measure, leading to the perception that the 'Eighties had a massive increase in crime over previous decades. Exacerbating this was asset forfeiture, which provided incentive to municipalities and states to pursue criminal claims in cases with even weak bases so that they could obtain property for use or sale (see below). So while the crime stats may not be deliberately “cooked”, they’ve certainly been unevenly warmed by changes through the years, and making an apples-to-apples comparison is problematic.
Although asset forfeiture has gone to something of a decline compared to the mid-'Nineties when it reached an all-time high (owing partly to negative public perception and partly to legislative and judicial restrictions) it is still a major revenue stream for most major state and local law enforcement agencies, and so such operations are self-supporting when they can maintain a rhythm of arrests and seizures. Nonetheless, due to reductions in tax base owing as much to home foreclosures and loss of property tax revenue as to reductions in consumer spending, most cities are significantly cutting back on all public services including fire and law enforcement support, particularly costly overtime pay.
Another factor for the drop in murder rate in NYC at least, is that (as I hear it) the NYC ambulance service reorganised itself around then, and were able to get out to shootings a lot quicker than before (IIRC 1 hour instead of 2). Consequently a lot of shootings that would have previously been murders ended up as injuries that were recovered from. Not that that stopped the NYPD from taking credit for the reduction in the murder rate, and assigning it to their zero-tolerance policy, instead of entirely unrelated co-incidental factors.