But today I read an interesting and sobering analysis of British crime in City Journal by Claire Berlinski. Besides rationalizing the apparent disjuncture of officially declining crime rates and escalating public fear, Berlinski sheds some light on the statistical difficulties involved in crime rates themselves. To take just one relevant example, consider the relationship of punishment to reporting: if a criminal justice system generally metes out lenient punishments that more often than not don't include incarceration, victims will be less inclined to report the commission of crime.
Why? Because the criminal is likely to be free to bring retribution against his accuser in very short order if he is not held in prison or otherwise deterred by sufficiently serious punishment.
Berlinski concludes with a call for what worked in New York City more than a decade ago, namely "Broken Windows" policing:
The reason Broken Windows policing works is not that it is inherently important to jail every petty thug who breaks a window; it is that the window-breakers tend to be muggers, rapists, burglars, and murderers as well. If you get them off the streets, the rate of serious crime will fall.
The whole piece is worth a careful read.
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