When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York City in 1994, one of his top goals was reducing crime. This meant all crime, not just those that grab headlines but those at the pyramid’s base. He stated at the time: “Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”
The theory behind Giuliani’s approach wasn’t novel. Dubbed the “broken windows” approach, the theory was just as Giuliani explained it — laxity begets criminality — and at its core were more resources and arrests. According to a NBER paper on Giuliani’s methods: “the police force in New York City grew by 35 percent in the 1990s, the numbers of prison inmates rose 24 percent.”
The report argued that deterrence had a bigger effect than a growing economy. For New Yorkers, the results spoke for themselves: “Between 1990 and 1999, homicide dropped 73 percent, burglary 66 percent, assault 40 percent, robbery 67 percent, and vehicle hoists 73 percent.”
California Dreamin’
The other side of the country, however, presents a very different story. During Kamala Harris’ tenure (2011-2017) as state attorney general, California decided to break its own windows.
One of the drivers of California’s descent into dystopia has been the now infamous Proposition 47. On 2014’s ballot, it promised a win-win by “requir[ing] misdemeanor sentence instead of felony for certain drug and property offenses.” But it wouldn’t apply to those “with prior conviction for serious or violent crime and registered sex offenders,”
