Graffiti, Cigarettes, and Hotel Room Keys……..a Honeymoon Story
My wife and I arrived in Athens on September 27 for the first leg of our honeymoon. We took a 45 minute train ride from the airport to Syntagma station. We weren’t able to check in at our hotel, so we dropped off our stuff in the lobby and walked around the city. We ate delicious dolmas and gyros and saw structures built 2,500 years ago. While Athens was beautiful, Jackie and I were shocked by the amount of graffiti. It was ugly and everywhere. The graffiti reminded me of Broken Windows Theory.
James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling introduced the idea in 1982. They argued that broken windows are “a signal that no one cares.” If “a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken,” they wrote. Extending the metaphor, they argued that if public disorder and petty crimes go uncontested, bigger problems (e.g. robbery, rape and murder) will take place. As such, Broken Windows Theory posits that police should crack down on things like vandalism, public drinking, jaywalking, and turnstile jumping in order to prevent more serious crimes from taking place.
American cities, especially New York City, saw a steep rise in crime in the 1970s and 1980s. In New York City between 1972 and 1994, most years had 2,000+ murders. The least lethal year in NYC was 1985, when there were “only” 1,683 killings. Time magazine famously ran the “Rotting of the Big Apple” cover issue on September 17, 1990. Then, surprisingly, crime decreased in the late 1990s.
There are a number of arguments for why the drop took place. Some argue that legalizing abortion via Roe v. Wade abortion led to fewer unwanted babies, which meant fewer maladjusted and violent young men two decades later. Others argue that the decrease use of lead in gasoline played an important role. While I’m open to these theories, I’m convinced that broken-windows policing made a big difference. Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton started by cracking down on the squeegee men and turnstile jumpers, and Giuliani’s successor, Michael Bloomberg, kept the pressure on. In 2013, NYC, then with a population of 8.5 million, had 333 murders.
Of course, there were problems with the Giuliani and Bratton approach. Critics point to over-policing of minority communities and the fact that impoverished people received large fines for minor offenses. Certainly, officers arrested individuals who posed no real threat to public safety. Many of these arrests could lead to abusive behavior. A good example of the excesses can be seen with the murder of Eric Garner. If there were camera phones in the 1990s and early 2000s like there are in the 2010s and 2020s, I’m sure we would have seen many more horrific videos of police brutality.
It’s important to pursue a balance. We don’t want to curtail civil liberties. We don’t people improperly arrested. But NYC leaders made a mistake in going too far away from broken windows policing. Recently, American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray dove into the numbers between 2013 through 2022. He counted arrests for eight categories of offenses (vandalism, turnstile-jumping, vagrancy, public drunkenness, lewd behavior, prostitution and solicitation thereof, loitering, and disorderly conduct). Murray identified a steep and steady fall in arrests for broken-windows offenses. The step away from Broken Windows Policing has led to an uptick in violence, vandalism, drug use, and shoplifting.
Given that Jackie and I are moving to Queens in a few months, I’m more invested then ever before in a safe NYC. I hope Mayor Adams tackles the small things but does it fairly and in a way that doesn’t trample on civil liberties, doesn’t lead to over policing, and doesn’t end in mass incarceration. For instance, NYC Attorney General Cy Vance instructed the police to stop arresting people who would jump turnstiles. Thankfully, Mayor Adams has once again told police to crack down on these minor offensives.
After our trip to Athens, Jackie and I spent time on a small Greek island and in Rome. The food was incredible, and the historic sites were fascinating. But one thing that stuck out to us during all three legs of our honeymoon was the smoking. Our time in Greece and Italy reminded us of Mad Men, a show about the 1960s, which Jackie and I started watching before we left for Europe. Every character smokes, and there is smoking in every every single scene.
While Cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of disease and death in the United States, there has been a dramatic reduction over the last several decades. In 1965, 42.4 percent of Americans smoked. Today, that number has dropped to 11.5 percent. A host of policy moves have made the difference. Cigarette taxes increased the purchase cost. Anti-smoking campaigns, like the Truth Initiative, influenced a whole generation. It helps that restaurants and bars have barred smoking and that cigarette companies were required to put labels on the packaging.
Thinking about the twin topics of crime and smoking make me hopeful about public policy reforms for the many problems we face in America. Intractable problems can be altered in transformational ways. We can change major cultural trends.
I’ll end with a final anecdote. Jackie and stayed at three beautiful hotels over the course of nine days. At each place, the lights and air conditioning didn’t turn on without a hotel room key. When we left the room, we had to take the key out of the slot, which turned the power off. I hope hotels in America embrace this technology. It will save on energy and help the environment. As with public health issues of smoking and crime, we can remember that small steps can make a big difference. We face real challenges with climate change and there are small moves that can move us in the right direction. Hotel keys can be one small piece of the puzzle.