George Kelling just died.  Oh, you may not know his name (he was a professor at Harvard decades ago), but you know his big theory.

“Broken Windows”.

This theory was an outgrowth of yet another experiment police effected in the 1970s and 1980s.  That experiment removed police from the patrol cars and put them on the streets.  In the cold, in the rain, in neighborhoods where they were not wanted.  The policemen were not fans of the program.  And, it turned out,  crime was not reduced by the program.  Even though there were claims that the neighborhoods with the walking patrols felt “safer”.  (There IS something to be said about psychic benefits.)

Broken Windows was another such program.  It was a metaphor that Kelling and James Wilson coined.  When a neighborhood is replete with broken windows, it usually means that the neighborhood has a high crime rate.  The fact that there is no data to substantiate this idea, and this social disorder causes crime.  (We’ve discussed correlation and causation many times.   To validate the “Broken Windows” theory would require proof that disorder causes fear, fear causes a breakdown in the social order [aka community cohesion] And, crime has to be shown to cause disorder. )

You guessed it- no scientific proof has ever been found. And, that truism is one of the factors that led to the disproportionate jailing of Black men in America.  (Thank you, Rudy Giuliani.)

But, there’s another way to reduce crime.  One that, like broken windows, became a truism.  Until now, when proof has been developed.

For decades, many of the residents in public housing clamored for more streetlights to help reduce the crime in their neighborhoods.  Lack of streetlights was the third most common complaint to the 311 lines in NY City from 2010 through 2016.

This new study was building on the 2015 study by Drs. Doleac (Texas A&M) and Sanders (Cornell) that found that when daylight savings considerations moved light from morning to evening, there was a drop in daily robberies by 7%.  (That really should be stated as a 27% drop over the evening hours, which suddenly were light due to the ‘time change‘.)   And, like putting police on the streets walking a beat, adding street lights takes money.

But, under Mayor Bill de Blasio (with the assistance of the NY City police, the Housing Authority, and the University of Chicago researchers who effected the research), 40 portable, diesel-powered flood lights that generate some 600K lumens (note this means they are 500X as powerful as our indoor lamps) were placed randomly around public housing communities.  The costs for this program ran some $ 5 million- and that was just for 6 months.

The results?  A 59% decrease in serious crimes.   What serious crimes?  Felonious assaults and robberies constituted some ¾ of the crimes, but murder, manslaughter, burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft were also reduced.

Drs. Aaron Chalfin (Penn), Benjamin Hansen (Oregon), Jason Lerner and Lucie Parker (both at the University of Chicago, but all four are associated researchers at the Crime Labs at the University of Chicago) published the results of their study via the National Bureau of Economic Research.  This dramatic reduction in crime is something that would occur if a police department upped its staffing by 10%- which means street lighting is a most cost-effective crime deterrent.

An average of seven light towers were dispersed in each test development, which meant that the total population studies approached some 40,000 residents.  But, when the researchers extended their analysis to include a two block radius AROUND the light tower placements (in case the criminals decided that they should relocate their nefarious activities away from the lights), they still found there was a 36% reduction in crime.

Because of these results, the city installed permanent LED spotlights around East Harlem and downtown Brooklyn.  And, they plan to replace (the now gone) diesel light towers with 42 more LED streetlights in the housing developments  At a cost of about $ 54 million.

Finally, a program that makes a difference.