You are making a distinction between the crime rate and the arrest rate that is important, because the two aren’t the same. And there are other variables that have to be taken into consideration–in urban areas the public drug trade looms large.

It seems to me that there are so many variables at work here that it’s almost impossible to untangle them. There really does seem to have been a full pendulum cycle from lock-em-up to let-em-loose to lock-em-up, which tracks vaguely with crime rates. But is that because crime rate is strongly determined by those? Or do you just trail the crime rate with your enforcement strategies? (If crime rates are skyrocketing, you’d never start becoming more lenient in enforcement. Similarly, if crime rates are historically low, you probably won’t start super strict enforcement.)

After reading your exchange with Cobb I think I’ll keep my comments short and sweet. Those articles you referenced were fascinating stuff. Never heard anything about that before, but I can see why. Despite the truth in the data and the strength of the evidence, no public figure is willing to strand up and proclaim this truth out loud because of how it might sound. Much easier to let Giuliani keep lying.

Giuliani employed two tactics to reduce crime. The first involved GIS data…which is what you’re talking about now. Figure out where the crime is occurring…put resources there. Straightforward.

But he also employed a broken windows approach. He arrested people for violating all types of things that normally people wouldn’t be arrested for–like jaywalking. Like littering. This is the set of practices I’m referring to.

You aren’t willing to accept the argument that lead poisoning reduces impulse control, but are willing to accept that more broken windows in a neighborhood increases crime?

Lead poisoning may be a catalyst, but it doesn’t cause crime. I mean get Freudian about it. We all hate our mothers but the presence of lead makes the difference between hating and killing? You might as well talk about the presence of bottled water and its correlation to college educational acheivement. Bottom line, I think lead poisoning is a trailing indicator of poverty, like malaria in the Third World.

Bratton didn’t take his cues from a researcher, he took his cues from the theorist. note the difference. james q. wilson never tested the soundness of his theory. and as far as giuliani goes he was damned when he suggested that the police protest dinkins.

The death of these experiments will demonstrate the good intentions of ‘neighborhood policing’ and ‘nation building’ are as foolish as paleocons have always said. War is war and to hell with what the people thing. Policing is policing. Arrest the criminals and leave no leaflets saying ‘we are not your enemy’. If local populations will not be swayed by the values of the external force, then the external forces, in response, will become more brutally efficient.

Us vs them is clear and easy.

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I find it difficult to understand the causal relationship between lead poisoning and crime. It’s absurd, just as Bratton says. People aren’t convicted of crimes based on their lead-content.
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Thirdly, it was not Giuliani who came up with the idea but with the decision to change police tactics. It was Bratton, and Bratton took his cues from another researcher. The common sense explantion of broken windows is still clear. The question of Giuliani’s involvement revolves around whether or not it makes sense to be pre-emptive in all high crime areas or to leave some high crime areas as a control group. So I don’t think, given certain black attitudes about the man, that he could have won either way. I think he was right to not leave any high crime areas as a control group to prove out the theory.