Is Crime Contagious?Experiments vindicate the broken windows theory of how disorder spreads
Ronald Bailey | November 25, 2008
New York City was a mess in the 1980s. I know because I lived in the East Village for a good stretch of that decade. Fortunately, my apartment building was on the marijuana block (the crack block was two over), so things were relatively mellow. My building's first story was covered in graffiti. Bums (I mean homeless men) often curled up on the floor of the foyer to sleep when it got cold. A shanty town sheltering 100 homeless people established itself in nearby Tompkins Square Park. All of the cars on my block had signs in their windows reading, "Don't Bother. Radio Already Stolen."