By BERNARD E. HARCOURT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Whatever
the outcome of
today's mayoral primary, there is already at least
one clear winner:
the notion that New York City's
remarkable drop
in crime can be sustained only by
continuing the
Giuliani administration's crackdown on
quality-of-life
offenses.
This "broken
windows" theory — the idea that tolerating
minor infractions
like graffiti, aggressive panhandling and
turnstile jumping
encourages more serious crimes by
sending a signal
that the community is not in control — has
been endorsed
in some form by all the candidates. Some
have expressed
concern that the police under Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani
have not paid enough attention to
civil liberties.
But what they have missed is that this style
of policing
leads to the violations of personal rights that
they denounce.
And what voters have missed is a real
debate on crime
and policing, as each candidate jockeys
to be the next
Rudy Giuliani on crime.
There is little,
if any, evidence that the crackdown on
squeegee men
and graffiti scribblers has played much of a
role in reducing
crime in New York. Since the early
1990's, most
major American cities have seen their crime
rates drop significantly,
in some cases even further than
New York's has.
Many of these cities did not undertake
anything like
New York's crackdown on small-time
offenses.
A 1999 study
of the 17 largest cities compared each city's
most recent
drop in homicides. New York's rate of decline
was the fifth-largest,
behind those of San Diego,
Washington,
St. Louis and Houston.
San Diego, seated
along a major drug smuggling corridor
close to the
Mexican border, is particularly interesting. In
the late 1980's,
its police department began adopting a
very different
style — a problem-solving,
community-oriented
approach. While recording
impressive drops
in crime between 1993 and 1996, the
city also posted
a 15 percent drop in arrests and an 8
percent decline
in complaints of police misconduct.
Criminologists
say a number of other factors have
contributed
to declining crime rates in New York —
among them,
the sharp increase in the police force. Former
Mayor David
Dinkins hired more than 2,000 new police
officers, and
Mr. Giuliani hired another 4,000. From 1991
to 1998 the
force grew by almost a quarter, giving New
York the highest
ratio of officers per civilian of the
nation's large
cities.
A fall in the
crack cocaine trade, a strong economy, new
computerized
police tracking systems, more prisoners and
an aging population
have also contributed to lower crime
rates.
The best social-scientific
evidence has shown that a
neighborhood's
graffiti, litter or public drunks do not
necessarily
point to a serious crime problem. The
research suggests
that rather than leading to serious crime,
disorder — like
crime — is caused by conditions like
poverty and
a lack of trust between neighbors.
The most rigorous
research to date, a 1999 study by
Robert Sampson
of the University of Chicago and Stephen
Raudenbush of
the University of Michigan, concludes that
"the current
fascination in policy circles on cleaning up
disorder through
law enforcement techniques appears
simplistic and
largely misplaced, at least in terms of
directly fighting
crime."
Whatever effect
the quality-of-life campaign has had on
serious crime
in New York is, in all likelihood, not a
result of fixing
broken windows or cleaning the city of
squeegee men.
It is because of the increased surveillance
afforded by
Giuliani-style policing. The broken-windows
policy has made
possible a 66 percent jump in
misdemeanor
arrests from 1993 to 1998 and sharp
increases in
stop-and-frisks that allow more searches for
guns, more checks
for outstanding warrants and more
fingerprint
collection.
This enhanced
surveillance has come with a big price tag:
a 37 percent
increase in complaints of police misconduct
from 1993 to
1999, significant racial disparities in
enforcement,
illegal strip searches and many traumatic
encounters —
some of them deadly — for ordinary
citizens. It
has also aggravated racial divisions.
So do we need
a broken-windows type of policing? Not
for combating
serious crime. This approach to law
enforcement
diminishes trust between the police and the
community, violates
basic rights and scapegoats the
homeless and
other people we deem disorderly. Clearly,
there still
needs to be a mayoral debate on whether New
York City wants
to bear that cost.
Bernard E.
Harcourt is a professor of law at the University
of Arizona
and the author of "Illusion
of Order: The False
Promise of
Broken Windows Policing."