Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't by John Jr. (books that read to you TXT) 📕

However, other factors in the city besides policing strategies were also changing in the 1990s. Probably the single most important factor was the increase in the number of full-time sworn police officers, which grew from 26,844 in 1990 to 39,779 by 2000.111 The growth in the per capita number of officers in New York City was roughly two and a half times the rate in other large cities.112 The city also greatly improved its hiring standards and increased officer pay.113

In fact, the entire nature of the city’s police force was transformed in the 1990s. In the 1980s, the NYPD was undermanned, demoralized, and hamstrung by debilitating regulations. Michael Julian, a former NYPD chief of personnel, described how the department was hindered by the kinds of counterproductive affirmative action policies discussed earlier: “The department abandoned all physical screening of applicants in the ’80s out of fear of lawsuits by minority applicants and women. Some officers hired under relaxed testing lack the strength to pull the trigger of a gun. There are hundreds, if not thousands of police officers on the streets today who, when a suspect runs from them, have no other option than to call another cop, because they do not have the physical ability to pursue them.”114 The NYPD, however, was one of the few departments during the 1990s that rejected the affirmative action trend. Starting in 1994, the police academy re-imposed strength standards that had been abandoned.115 With more officers of higher quality, New York’s arrest rates rose and criminals found it more difficult to commit crime.

Evidence for the overall effectiveness of the “broken windows” policy is mixed. On the one hand, there is strong evidence that when police step up enforcement efforts in an area through more frequent arrests or when private citizens become more able to defend themselves, criminals move on to more hospitable areas.116 On the other hand, some analysts have found little relationship between young males’ view of their neighborhoods as being crime-prone and the rate at which they themselves would commit crime.117

A more direct approach is to analyze crime rates across a range of cities that adopt the “broken-windows” approach or other similar policing strategies. Examining all U.S. cities with more than 10,000 people, I found that the effect of the different policing policies is decidedly mixed, with crime rates apparently going up and down in almost a random pattern. For cities with a “broken-windows” policy, murder and auto theft actually rose, while rapes and larceny fell.118 Perhaps New York simply implemented this policy in a better way than other cities did. While “broken windows” may be one factor among many in reducing crime in the Big Apple, a city that implements the policy without taking additional measures should not expect positive results.

A Few Odds and Ends about Crime

How rent control killed the kitty cat: Enforcing the law when everyone involved wants to break it

Enforcing the law is difficult enough for violent crimes committed against innocent victims. But it’s even more challenging in cases where both parties to an agreement want to break the law. A personal example will not only show how the law in such situations can be effectively enforced, but can even bring about self-enforcement by the parties involved. This is accomplished by creating an unusual disincentive—distrust between the two parties.

When I was a student at UCLA, a friend of mine who was moving away asked if he could leave with me an old stray cat that he had recently adopted. Because of its gray coat, he had named it Confederate. My wife and I felt sorry for the cat, so we asked the apartment manager about keeping him. She said that she had to check with the apartment’s owners, but that we could keep the cat until she received an answer.

We didn’t hear back for a few weeks. During that time I found out that Confederate had feline leukemia, a highly contagious disease among cats. Affected cats can still live long lives if given antibiotics, but without medication they can die from the most minor infection.

The manager eventually told us that we could only keep the cat if we paid a higher rent. Although I was willing to do this, she told us that this was not actually an option because it would violate rent control laws. I tried without any luck to find a new home for Confederate. His former owner said he couldn’t keep pets in his new apartment, and other friends who I approached either already had a pet or simply didn’t want to take in an old, sick cat. Workers at animal shelters told me they’d have to put the cat to sleep to keep him from infecting their other cats.

I called the rent control board, explained the situation, and asked if I could get a waiver from the rent control laws so that the owners would allow me to keep Confederate. The board’s representative told me simply, “If they let you keep the cat, you can keep the cat. If they don’t let you keep the cat, you can’t keep the cat.” I again related that I could only keep the cat if I paid a higher rent, but that this was illegal. Growing exasperated, the representative just repeated that I could keep the cat if the owners let me. The conversation went on like this for a good forty minutes.

Frustrated, I went to the legal aid clinic at the UCLA Law School to get advice from its young, aspiring lawyers. Their counsel was pretty straightforward: just break the law and pay the extra rent under the table. But the owners wouldn’t consider it: if the city discovered that I was paying too much rent, the owners would have to repay me double the amount of the overpayment.

Perhaps, under some