Sunday, November 08, 2009

How Did New York Get Nicer?

Simon Heffer sticks to the view that it was Giuliani and Bratton's zero tolerance strategy that made New York a nicer, safer place. In Freakonomics Levitt and Dubner deny this, saying the drop in crime had already begun, there had already been a police hiring binge, crime was dropping everywhere not just in New York and this - their killer counter-intuitive argument - was a result of the legalisation of abortion. Poor single women started aborting future hoodlums. I don't know which side I'm on. The improvement in New York since the seventies when I first went there is certainly spectacular. London is now a more alienating city. One question would be: is the improvement in New York solely a function of the falling crime rate or is there some other force at work? The city feels better in all kinds of ways, not just because one no longer feels one might be mugged. Perhaps this is a knock-on effect or perhaps the zero tolerance strategy drew the citizens together, gave them a communal purpose, in some intangible way. This would, of course, be reinforced by 9/11. Anyway, I don't know and I'm recording a discussion with Levitt for Radio 3 on Tuesday, so perhaps I ought to make up my mind.

10 comments:

  1. Isn't it mostly about money in both places? Areas have simply gone from being dingy to being smart. Clerkenwell, Islington, Clapham, Balham, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Shepherds Bush, Bermondsey, Kings Cross, the whole South Bank, etc., etc.

    Streets in Notting Hill, where I remember the crunch of crack vials underfoot now provide homes to millionaire ex-European Commissioners and the like: manners change accordingly. (Peckham on the other hand...)

    Mostly down to huge private bonuses and huge public tax receipts from...I refer you to your previous post!

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  2. Maybe it was the obvious answer: a combination of factors. Without both abortion legislation and the Giuliani/Bratton approach, the results would never have been so beneficial.

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  3. So, Gaw, I take it that they don't drop their crack vials to the floor but put them in the proper recycling bin?

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  4. London is now a more alienating city waddya mean, now, London was alienating in 1968 and the reason that we got the hell out of there.
    New York may not require the donning of anti-stab vests any longer but their airports are still in the dark ages. Just comfortably settled in me seat at Newark, "sir, could we ask you to give up your seat, we have to fly with a spare part to Greensboro and have a weight problem, we will book you on the next available flight, FOC, and give you $100 cash."
    Surprising how many Americans don't understand the phrase 'up yours'

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  5. I remember Steven Pinker writing in the Sunday Times a few months ago, saying (I think, can't find the article) that violent crime rates were closely linked with a countries economic situation.

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  6. I thought the Freakonomics argument was very poor as it did not say why crime was far lower in, say, the 1930s when abortion was illegal.

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  7. Jim, that Steven Pinker article may be connected with the video here, Steven Pinker on the myth of violence. In this he argues that violence of all kinds has been declining dramatically for several hundred years, but that for various reasons including our own "cognitive illusion" we tend not to think it has.

    However, his talk does contain the quote "irruptions of violence occur in zones of anarchy". At first glance this might mean that zero tolerance is the answer. Hmmn. Not so sure. Behind all these questions and answers there still lies one question: how do we put together a society in which we can deal effectively and by common agreement with those who've landed up at the bottom of the pile for whatever reason? If you're at the bottom of the pile and start to think you will always stay there, avoiding violence and crime is no longer in your self-interest. In fact it might easily look as it crime was your only career option. So just policing the problem isn't going to make it go away. In a way, it simply hides it or moves it elsewhere.

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  8. Mark - that was uber interesting. I think you should forward that video to Paul Dacre and Peter Hitchens.

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  9. One factor not often noted outside of Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx themselves is the rise of Bill Wilson's astounding Metro Ministries, better known to generations of kids in those areas as the Yogi Bear Sunday School (which, counter-intuitively, doesn't meet on a Sunday very much - but does go to where the punters are, some of the worst housing projects in city, as I know from taking part on one memorable occasion). When I last visited a few years ago, one of the sparkling young women who'd come through the training from a very young age and now led part of the work told us proudly about a viral email that was going round the state, asking "Are you a real New Yorker?" One of five questions to which you had to know the answer to make the grade was "What is the Yogi Bear Sunday School?" It's a viral effect all of its own, not enough talked about outside Christian circles (and often not enough within them). I've always felt it was bound to have made a major contribution to the clean up of the city everyone's noticed. Bill Wilson's own life story is extraordinary in every way and there's a rare integrity in the work itself.

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  10. I just came across an article that made me think of this thread: Google Data Shows the Most Obscenity-Obsessed U.S. Cities. Here's an excerpt:

    The defense attorney in the case had planned to use Google search data to show that Pensacola's morals were lax in comparison to the rest of the country. The research never saw the light of day, but that didn't stop The Business Insider from performing its own analysis of search statistics to determine the most obscene cities in America.

    A year later, Business Insider decided it was time to update the rankings, and last year's surprise winner -- Louisville, Kentucky -- really cleaned up its act and dropped to number ten. Several major cities are featured on the list, including Boston and Philadelphia, but, amazingly, New York avoided placing in the top ten. Take that, other East Coast metropolitan areas!


    I also noticed that the New York Yankees, who beat out the Boston Red Sox, and ultimately the Phillies for the baseball championship, were a fun team to watch this year--and I'm a Red Sox fan. The Yankees were a better team inside and out than the Sox. Not only were the champs made up of superstars playing at their best, but acting their best as well. Even when Pedro Martinez, who is supposed to be hated in NYC was pitching fpr the Phillies, the treatment the press there gave him seemed to be in all good fun.

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