The Tipping Point Revisited: Broken Windows

Summary

Revisionist History: "The Tipping Point Revisited: Broken Windows" Summary

Introduction: Revisiting the Tipping Point and Broken Windows Theory

In the episode titled "The Tipping Point Revisited: Broken Windows," Malcolm Gladwell delves into his earlier work presented in his groundbreaking book, The Tipping Point. Released on October 24, 2024, this episode marks a reflective journey where Gladwell reassesses the conclusions he drew 25 years prior about New York City's dramatic decline in crime during the 1990s. He explores whether the strategies he endorsed, particularly the Broken Windows Theory, were indeed the pivotal factors in this transformation or if alternative explanations hold more weight.

Memories of 1990s New York and Crime

Gladwell opens the discussion by reminiscing about his youth in New York City during the early 1990s. Through conversations with old friends Peggy and Erica, he paints a vivid picture of the pervasive sense of danger that enveloped the city at the time.

• Social Climate and Precautions:

  • Peggy reminisces, “[00:19] Peggy: It was kind of like a given, you know?”
  • Erica adds insight into the communal precautions, “[00:50] Erica: What would I have actually done if someone had attacked me? I would put my keys between my fingers so that if someone attacked me, I was ready.”

• Collective Responsibility:

  • Reflecting on group safety, Gladwell notes, “[01:29] Malcolm Gladwell: Do you remember this? And if you didn't, who did and didn't have money for a cab?”

These anecdotes underscore the collective vigilance residents maintained to navigate a city grappling with high crime rates, particularly emphasizing the importance of not venturing out alone after dark.

The Broken Windows Theory and Rudy Giuliani's Implementation

Gladwell introduces the Broken Windows Theory as the cornerstone of his initial analysis in The Tipping Point. The theory posits that maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes helps deter more serious offenses.

• Definition and Application:
  • “[06:45] Malcolm Gladwell: ... broken windows was the theory that small crimes were invitations for large crimes.”

Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, emerges as the most fervent advocate of this theory. Gladwell cites Giuliani’s assertive stance during a mid-90s press conference:

• Giuliani’s Advocacy:
  • “[07:30] Rudy Giuliani: If somebody urinates in public, the person is telling you, I got a big problem. This is what broken window theory is all about.”

Giuliani’s aggressive policies, including the infamous "stop and frisk" practices, aimed to root out minor infractions as a means to foster a more orderly and safe urban environment.

Critical Examination: Stop and Frisk and the Floyd Case

The narrative takes a pivotal turn when Gladwell revisits the case of David Floyd, a young man whose encounters with the NYPD exemplify the controversial aspects of the Broken Windows approach.

• Floyd’s Experience:
  • “[14:36] David Floyd: We were stopped. We were frisked.”

Floyd's repeated stops and eventual lawsuit, Floyd v. The City of New York, became a landmark case that challenged the constitutionality of the NYPD's "stop and frisk" tactics. In 2013, a federal judge deemed these practices unconstitutional, signaling a significant shift away from the Broken Windows methodology.

New Findings: Examining Crime Decline Without Broken Windows

Gladwell presents the unexpected outcomes following the dismantling of the Broken Windows approach. Contrary to widespread belief that "stop and frisk" was instrumental in reducing crime, data revealed a continued and even accelerated decline in violent crimes post-2008.

• Crime Rate Trends:
  • “[19:03] Aaron Chalfin: ... New York is almost as safe as Paris. With respect to homicide rate, it's New York is closer to Paris than it is to other US Cities.”

This revelation challenges the initial premise that aggressive policing of minor crimes directly correlates with the reduction of serious offenses, suggesting that other factors contributed significantly to the downward trend in violence.

Alternative Strategies: Precision Policing and Community Interventions

Delving deeper, Gladwell explores alternative explanations for New York City's continued decline in crime, emphasizing the shift towards more targeted and community-focused policing strategies.

• Precision Policing:
  • “[29:48] Aaron Chalfin: ... a much better use of resources to focus, focus, focus, focus on the drivers of violence.”

Aaron Chalfin, a criminologist, discusses how the NYPD transitioned to precision policing, concentrating efforts on specific hotspots and key individuals driving violent crime. This approach proved more effective than the blanket application of Broken Windows tactics.

• Community Interventions:
  • Gladwell highlights initiatives like Philadelphia’s vacant lot cleanups, where systematic improvements to neglected areas led to significant reductions in gun violence.
  • “[32:37] Keith Green: And what Green's group has done is to systematically work its way through the city, Cleaning up the lots, planting grass, putting up low fences.”

These interventions underscore the importance of addressing the root causes of crime through environmental and social improvements rather than purely punitive measures.

Reflections and Conclusions

In concluding the episode, Gladwell candidly acknowledges the missteps in his initial analysis and the complexities of urban crime dynamics.

• Gladwell’s Admission:
  • “[30:35] Malcolm Gladwell: ... When it comes to epidemics, I wrote, a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work. I ... endorsed an idea that said a really good way to control an epidemic was to stop and frisk a hundred young men in the hopes of finding a gun on one of them. I was wrong.”

He emphasizes the necessity of focusing efforts on the few individuals who significantly impact crime rates, aligning with his earlier concepts of the "law of the few" from The Tipping Point. By shifting strategies from broad-spectrum policing to more refined, data-driven approaches, cities can more effectively combat violent crime without infringing on civil liberties.

Moreover, Gladwell reflects on the broader implications of his findings, advocating for a nuanced understanding of social issues and the importance of revisiting and revising theories as new evidence emerges.

Notable Quotes:

• Erica on Group Safety:

  • “[01:30] Erica: Only if you're in a large group.”

• Giuliani on Public Decency:

  • “[07:57] Rudy Giuliani: You have to pay attention to somebody urinating on the street... It is against the law to urinate in public.”

• Aaron Chalfin on Precision Policing:

  • “[29:48] Aaron Chalfin: ... it's a much better use of resources to focus, focus, focus, focus on the drivers of violence.”

• Andrew Papachristos on Social Networks and Violence:

  • “[26:51] Andrew Papachristos: ... the impact of these shootings tends to go about two or three handshakes, and then it starts to kind of drop off.”

Conclusion

"The Tipping Point Revisited: Broken Windows" offers a comprehensive and introspective analysis of urban crime reduction strategies, questioning long-held beliefs and highlighting the evolution of effective policing. Gladwell's willingness to reassess his earlier conclusions provides valuable insights into the complexities of social change and the importance of evidence-based approaches in shaping public policy.

Transcript

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Pushkin. What did it mean to go out on a Saturday or Friday night in 1993 in New York?

[Peggy]

It was kind of like a given, you know?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. You.

[Peggy]

You wear a fanny pack and once you're out on the streets, you turn it around so it's in front of you so you can see it.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Did you really do that?

[Peggy]

Absolutely.

[Erica]

Well, I actually. I'm going to interrupt. I remember I just had a flash of. Remember keys. We all had keys. And I used to walk around with keys so that each one. What would I have actually done if someone had attacked me? I would put my keys between my fingers so that if someone attacked me, I was ready.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Not long ago, I called up two friends who I used to hang out with when I first moved to New York city in my 20s. Peggy and Erica. Back in the 90s, we were all young and footloose and on edge. I seem to remember that at the end of every evening there was a discussion about. Everyone had to. We all had to talk about everyone's plan for getting home. Do you remember this? And if you didn't, who did and didn't have money for a cab? Did we. Did anyone. Under what circumstances would you take the subway on a Friday night after dinner?

[Erica]

If you were in a large group.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Only if you're in a large group.

[Erica]

A large group. And it was like a little adventure. So six people would all get on the subway late at night and you felt like you were being adventurous.

[Peggy]

Yeah. Thinking back on it, it felt very collegial. We did things as a group.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. You had to. Yes.

[Peggy]

And you were never left alone.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The New York City of that era was one of the most dangerous big cities in America. The subway was filthy. There was graffiti everywhere. There were two thousand, 262 murders in New York in 1990. More than six a day. Were we personally at risk? I don't know. But it felt like crime was all around us.

[Peggy]

You know, someone would always say, hey, don't worry, I'm walking you home. We were never allowed to walk alone.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. Even on a.

[Erica]

That's right. People would walk me home just because I. You didn't want to be by yourself.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

As a woman when you went on a date, even if it was a disaster, you had to walk. You had to walk the woman home.

[Erica]

Right.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Which is like so insanely awkward. You're like, you.

[Peggy]

We were, you know, independent women. But once the sun went down, you never walked alone.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Let's talk about how it gets better. I just remember that all of a sudden, all of the precautions seem to go out the window, right? And it's true. Statistically, we know by 97 or 98 the murder rate has dropped. I remember this. I had a bedroom when I was living in that walk up on Bank Street. My bedroom window overlooked the fire escape and I had previously been too scared to open my window at night. And then I started to open my window at night so that technically someone could have walked up, down the fire, up the fire, straight and walked in. But I was like, it's fine, now I can sleep. My name is Malcolm Glabwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part of a series introducing my new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, now available everywhere. And in this episode, I'm looking back at the question that got me started on tipping points 25 years ago. How, in the 90s did New York become one of the safest cities in America? In 1996, I wrote an article for the New Yorker magazine trying to explain this puzzle. It was called the Tipping Point. That article led to my first book called the Tipping Point, where I offered a more complete explanation. The success of the Tipping Point led to another book, and another and another. I wouldn't be here today talking to you were it not for my obsession way back when about what happened to crime in New York in the 1990s. And now I've written a sequel to that first book. Did I mention that it sat in bookstores everywhere? It's called Revenge of the Tipping Point. And in that spirit, I've decided to go back and conduct an audit of my conclusions from 25 years ago to look at my 30 something self in the eye and ask, was I right? Back in the 90s, I used to go to New York University's library all the time to look for ideas. Boast a big, squat Redstone building on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. This was before Google, so I was my own search engine. I'd wander the stacks for hours. And one day I was on the fifth floor in the HM1A6 aisle and I started leafing through the back issues of the American Journal of sociology from 1991. And I found a paper written by a professor named Jonathan Crane entitled the Epidemic Theory of Ghettos and Neighborhood Effects on Dropping out and Teenage Childbearing, a choice of words no one would use today. This is how it started. The word epidemic is commonly used to describe the high incidence of social problems in ghettos. The news is filled with feature stories on crack epidemics. Epidemics of gang violence and epidemics of teenaged childbearing. The term is used loosely in popular parlance, but turns out to be remarkably apt. The word epidemic to Crane wasn't a metaphor. It was a literal description. His point was that if you look closely at how those problems spread, how and why they go up and down, it looks exactly like the way viruses spread. Same rules, same patterns. And when I read that first paragraph, I thought, oh my God, this is exactly what happened in New York City. We had a real live epidemic of crime. And what is the hallmark of an epidemic? A tipping point. The moment when everything changes all at once. That moment when I left my window open because I suddenly felt safe was our tipping point. And so front and center in my first book was a description of what I saw as the reason why New York's epidemic suddenly tipped the police department's commitment to broken windows policing. Broken windows was the theory that small crimes were invitations for large crimes. That if you let people get away with little things, then you were signaling that it was okay to cross the line into bigger things, like serious acts of violence. And so what do you do? You don't let people get away with the little things. It was taking the concept of an epidemic and applying it to crime. Lawlessness wasn't random. It was something you could catch from those around you, the same way you can catch a cold from a warm, stuffy room full of four year olds.

[Rudy Giuliani]

If somebody urinates in public, the person is telling you, I got a big problem. This is what broken window theory is all about.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

The biggest champion of this idea was Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City at the time. Here he is at a press conference in the mid-90s, a few years into the broken windows experiment, where in a span of just a minute and a half, he references public urination eight times.

[Rudy Giuliani]

I mean, if some guy is urinating in public, we got a problem. Now you can do one of two things. You can ignore the problem and say, gee, I'm such a big fuzzy headed liberal that I'm going to walk away from it and we're going to make believe there's no problem. That's New York city in the 1980s. That's New York City with 2,000 murders. That's New York City with 500,000 crimes. You have to pay attention to people urinating on the street, and you have to get people to stop urinating on the streets. That's moving towards civilization, that's moving toward decency. That's what I mean by a decent Society that people want to invest in, people want their children to live in. You've got to pay attention to somebody urinating on the street. It may be a minor thing, it may be a serious thing, but you cannot ignore it. You have to deal with it. It is against the law to urinate in public.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Giuliani was elected in 1993 and reelected in 97 by a huge margin. Under his watch, the city was revitalized. People who had fled for the suburbs came back. Huge parts of Brooklyn were gentrified. Central park was cleaned up. I cannot tell you how gratifying it was to be a New Yorker in those years and finally get a mayor who said, enough. You can't jump subway turnstiles and smoke dope on the corner and harass pedestrians. But Giuliani wasn't just making an argument for civility, that it was more pleasant to live in a city where the streets were clean and the police were alert to every sign of disorder. He was making a more extravagant claim that arresting the guy urinating on the street was the reason why the murder rate dropped. And I believed him. Malcolm Gladwell is about to publish a book. Whenever it happens, huge things occur. About 10 years ago, the journalist John Ronson did a retrospective on the Tipping Point for a British program called the Culture show. And he talked to a public defender in the Bronx named Kate Rubin.

[Kate Rubin]

I would go around and I would talk to people in New York City, and liberal people, progressive people would say, oh, well, you know, we've had this miracle in New York. And some people would say, oh, yeah, Malcolm Gladwell's idea, Broken Windows.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I didn't watch any of this at the time, even though Ronson interviewed me for the segment, too. But I found it while working on this episode, and it made me realize that claims I made in the Tipping Point had far more reach than I ever imagined.

[Kate Rubin]

Some people, you know, knew that it wasn't his idea, but that he had popularized it. They'd read about it in the New Yorker in his book the Tipping Point. I would never try to speak to what his intent was, but I think the impact that he had was to serve as basically a marketing force for this idea. He truly popularized it.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

On the afternoon of February 27, 2008, a young man named David Floyd left his apartment on Beach Avenue in the Bronx. As he walked down the pathway next to his building, he ran into the tenant who lived downstairs who said he'd locked himself out of his apartment.

[David Floyd]

I was leaving my apartment to actually go to school, heading to school. I had my book bag on. You know, everything that normal students do as they're going to school.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is Floyd speaking in an interview with the civil rights group Race Forward. The landlord was Floyd's godmother. So Floyd went back inside to her apartment to get a ring of keys. And as he and the tenant tried to figure out which key worked in the door, three plainclothes police officers suddenly emerged. There had been reports of burglaries in the neighborhood. And here were two young men trying to get into a locked apartment.

[David Floyd]

We were stopped. We were frisked. We were, of course, told to put our hands up to stay where we were.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This was how the police put broken windows into practice. Don't let the little things pass you by. Be aggressive. Check for weapons, drugs. Maybe you find them, maybe you don't. But if you do that enough times, then young men leave their guns and drugs at home. Floyd had actually been stopped the previous April while walking down the street, followed by three officers in a van who jumped out and confronted him.

[David Floyd]

And again, it just, the whole experience is humiliating, it's embarrassing, and really, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of person you are, how tough you are, whatever. It's a scary thing because you don't know what is going to happen with your life. You don't know what's going to happen with your freedom.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Floyd becomes the face of a massive class action lawsuit, Floyd v. The City of New York, challenging the NYPD's policy of stop and frisk. And in 2013, Floyd wins. In a shocking ruling, a federal judge said the NYPD's use of stop and frisk was unconstitutional, effectively ending the broken windows era in New York City policing. Yes, it still happens today, but not in the way that it did 10 years ago, not even remotely close. It's no exaggeration to say that this was one of the most consequential court cases in the city's history.

[Aaron Chalfin]

A lot of people at the time, and I think, you know, not without reason, said, wow, this is going to compromise public safety.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is Aaron Chalfin who's part of a group of criminologists who have devoted themselves to understanding what exactly happened in New York.

[Aaron Chalfin]

The police are no longer going to be able to make a lot of stops and really show people that they were being proactive. So that might embolden more gun carrying, more violence, more homicide.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

When Chalfon says that at the time, a lot of people thought ending stop and frisk was going to lead to crime going back up, he means everyone, City government, the police force, pundits of every variety. That's what I thought, too. What everyone was saying in effect, was, yes, doing hundreds of thousands of police stops a year of young men like David Floyd, who may be doing nothing more than helping out a friend, is unfortunate, but being killed is a lot worse. And since this is what's keeping the crime rate down, we don't have a choice. That was the calculus. Even the judge in the Floyd case begins her ruling by making the same point. I emphasize at the outset, as I have throughout the litigation, that this case is not about the effectiveness of stop and frisk in deterring or combating crime. This court's mandate is solely to judge the constitutionality of police behavior, not its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool. She goes on, many police practices may be useful for fighting crime. Preventive detention or coerced confessions, for example, but because they are unconstitutional, they cannot be used, no matter how effective. She's basically saying there's a good chance that crime is going to go back up because of my ruling. But the Constitution is the Constitution. Even the people who hated broken windows thought that it worked. But then the very thing that absolutely no one expected to happen happens. Crime falls.

[Aaron Chalfin]

We ended stop question, frisk in New York, that went down by 90 or 95%, depending on which numbers you look at. Um, and. And yet we. We had this incredible, incredible 50% decline in homicide.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

In social science, a natural experiment is when the real world provides you with a clean way of measuring the truth or falsity of a given proposition. The Floyd decision was the perfect natural experiment for broken windows. All you have to do is compare before with after.

[Aaron Chalfin]

The amazing thing about New York is that if you look at 2010, New York City had a banner year in terms of homicide. It had. It was one of the lowest homic homicide rates in 40 years in the city's history in 2010. And you would have said, wow, like great progress. Let's just keep it up. Let's keep up the good work. Incredibly, by 2019, the year before the pandemic Right. Homicides went down by 50% in New York compared to 2010. Between 2010 and 2019, New York is unique in that it had another great homicide decline at a time when homicides were really flat nationally.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

This is hands down one of the strangest and craziest urban transformations ever. Just to give you a sense, if New York City's crime rate in 1990 had just stayed the same, didn't change for the next 35 years, the city would have had an additional 62,000 homicides, most of them, in all likelihood, young men of color. 62,000 young men currently walking around New York would be dead.

[Aaron Chalfin]

And by 2019, New York is almost as safe as Paris. With respect to homicide rate, it's New York is closer to Paris than it is to other US Cities, even like Boston, which is another safe city. Right. It's incredible.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You know how those billionaires left New York City from Miami during the pandemic, saying they couldn't deal with the taxes and the crime. Well, the violent crime rate in New York City after that second wave is half that of Miami. If you're really worried about crime, you should be selling your waterfront home in Coral Gables before someone murders you and move somewhere much safer, like the Bronx. Or here's another. J.D. vance, the junior senator from Ohio, tweets this in 2021. Serious question. I have to go to New York soon, and I'm trying to figure out where to stay. I've heard it's disgusting and violent there, but is it like Walking Dead season one or season four? I know, I know. There's a whole cottage industry of unearthing crazy things, J.D. vance once said. But Vance is from just outside Cincinnati. The violent crime rate in Cincinnati at the exact moment he wrote that tweet was twice the violent crime rate in New York City. Serious question, Senator, I have to go to your hometown soon and I'm trying to figure out where to stay because compared to where I come from, it's disgusting and violent there. But I digress back to Chalfon and the question at hand.

[Aaron Chalfin]

And so, you know, it does give you the sense that making lots and lots of these stops was not the key ingredient.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It does, doesn't it? We conducted a natural experiment and the results are in. It wasn't broken windows. It wasn't stop and frisk.

[Rudy Giuliani]

My administration will issue hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to reward cities and towns and return to proven crime fighting methods, including stop and frisk and broken windows policing. We did that with Rudy Giuliani it was so successful.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

At 3 o'clock in the morning, sometimes I lie awake and I think, oh, God, did he read the Tipping Point too? I don't reread any of my books once I've written them, particularly ones from 25 years ago, like the Tipping Point. I mean, why would I. Do I want to wear the clothes I wore in the year 2000? No, I don't. Do I even want to see pictures of myself from 2000? Not particularly. So I didn't reread the Tipping Point until I made the decision last year to revisit my first book on its silver anniversary. There were parts that I love. It felt like rediscovering some lost friend. Hush Puppies, Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg, Paul Revere's Ride. There are also parts that mystified me. Did I really write an entire chapter on the children's TV show Blue's Clues? But the crime chapter was the only place where I said I would write that so differently today. Today, if I were rewriting, I'd begin with the work of a sociologist in Chicago named Andrew Papachristos.

[Andrew Papachristos]

People talk about gun violence as an epidemic or disease, and it is in many fronts. But really, I wanted to take it seriously. It was like, okay, if it's an epidemic, is it a blood borne pathogen or is it an airborne pathogen? And actually, thank God it's not an airborne pathogen, right? You don't catch a bullet like you catch a cold. It's actually transmitted through behaviors. And I just tried to figure out ways that science might kind of boost or amplify those insights.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Papa Christos took every single arrest over more than six years in Chicago. So hundreds of thousands of arrests. And he made something called a network map.

[Andrew Papachristos]

All right? First you see, it happens in groups. And then like, okay, what about individuals? All right, well, does it concentrate? What about exposure? What about time?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So if Andy and Malcolm are arrested together for shooting someone, then Andy and Malcolm are two dots on the map connected by a line. And if Malcolm then is arrested with Joe, there's a line connecting Malcolm to Joe. Malcolm and Joe are one degree, or to use Papa Christos favorite term, one handshake apart. Joe and Andy. Two handshakes apart. You do that for years and years of Chicago arrest data, and you get a truly enormous map.

[Andrew Papachristos]

You have this very, very large network, right? And then what you do is you sprinkle in the victimizations, which come from a separate source of data, right? They come from homicide records, they come from shooting files, police, public health.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

He took the Names of everyone who had been shot over the same period and looked to see how many of those names were in his network map. And what he found was the victims were already there, and they were clustered together.

[Andrew Papachristos]

You just match the data, and every place where there's a shooting, the victim's bright red, for example. And then what you see is that these bright red dots all linger together, all clumped together. Right. Like your kid took a handful of Christmas ornaments and, like, threw to the tree, and they're all in one spot.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It looks just like the social maps epidemiologists used to construct for the spread of HIV in the 1980s. If someone in your social circle got infected with HIV, then your chances of becoming infected with HIV increased. In Papa Christo's maps, the risk of contagion extended 3 degrees. If Malcolm gets shot, Andy is at risk, and so is Joe, and so are any people Andy and Joe were arrested with.

[Andrew Papachristos]

Like other social networks, the impact of these shootings tends to go about two or three handshakes, and then it starts to kind of drop off. So these clusters are fairly dense, and they stick around.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So, hold on. This is crucial. So I've got my social network map, and I'm overlaying. I'm sticking in all of the shootings into the. And I noticed the shootings are clustering. So we have this triangle of Joe, Andy, Malcolm, and Malcolm gets shot. And so once we observe that Malcolm gets shot, what you're saying is that the likelihood of someone in my. Someone connected to me also getting shot increases skyrockets.

[Andrew Papachristos]

Absolutely.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And you saying that the connection. The risk is skyrocketing within between 1 and 3 degrees.

[Andrew Papachristos]

That's the. That's the where risk is the highest.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Andrew Papachristos]

Once you get past kind of three degrees, it really levels. Goes down and level up.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

When you observe this, did this surprise.

[Andrew Papachristos]

You how concentrated it was? Surprised me. You know, when you look at these numbers, even when you look at the larger CO offending network, you're talking about 5 to 6% of a neighborhood's population. But when you start looking at where the violence concentrates, it's less than a percent. You're talking about, you know, on the west side of Chicago, one of the neighborhoods we were working, there's about 50,000 people. You're talking about 400 individuals.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

400 individuals on the entire west side of Chicago. The crime problem on the west side of Chicago isn't being driven by everyone. It's being driven by. By a tiny subset of people within a dense social network where someone Close to them has already been a victim of gun violence. The west side of Chicago is not a dangerous place. Highly specific networks of people within the west side of Chicago are dangerous places. The same pattern holds true in New York City. Why wasn't Stop and Frisk an effective strategy in the end? Because it assumed that violent crime was something embedded within an entire community. And it's not. Even the NYPD's own numbers said so. In one eight year span, New York City police officers frisked 2.3 million people and found weapons in 1.5% of those stops. They were looking for needles in haystacks. Why would that be an effective crime fighting strategy? Aaron Chalfin, the criminologist, says that one of the main reasons crime fell so dramatically in New York after Stop and Frisk ended was that the NYPD took those lessons to heart. They switched from the kind of indiscriminate policing found in Stop and Frisk to precision policing. They started focusing on hotspots, deploying police to the specific places where crime was the worst.

[Aaron Chalfin]

More targeted investigations, more thinking about who are the shooters? Who are the major players in neighborhoods that are driving the shootings? What can we do to identify those people? Incapacitate those people? So when we think about good policing and we think in particular about homicide, it's a very small number of people who drive the problem. It's a couple thousand people in a city of eight and a half million and, you know, making lots of low level arrests. Maybe you'll find some more guns and things like that, but it's probably a much better use of resources to focus, focus, focus, focus on the drivers of violence. And when you do that, in my paper, we find that when there's a major gang takedown around a public housing development in the next 18 months, homicides are down by about 30%.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

30%. Fighting an epidemic means focusing on the few, not the many. And by the way, who made this argument as loudly as anyone? I did. In the Tipping Point. I called it the law of the few and it took up a third of the book. When it comes to epidemics, I wrote, a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work. I talked about how this principle plays out in outbreaks of infectious disease, in the spread of fashion trends, in word of mouth. I described in great detail the kinds of people who make those special few on and on. But then when it came to crime, I suddenly forgot all about the law of the few and endorsed an idea that said a really good way to control an epidemic. Was to stop and frisk a hundred young men in the hopes of finding a gun on one of them. I was wrong. I'm sorry. So, I don't know. Feel free to ask us any questions. There's one more thing I would do if I were rewriting the crime chapter. I would talk about Philadelphia and about a day I spent recently driving around the city with a guy named Keith Green. So where. Where are we headed?

[Keith Green]

So we're, we're going to be driving in, like, the West Philadelphia area.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Greenwood works for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, A group that was founded in 1827 and is best known for putting on the world's largest indoor flower show. And for two hours, we talked about vacant lots. 30,000 vacant parcels.

[Keith Green]

There's over 30,000 vacant parcels in the city of Boulevard.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, there were blocks we drove past that had two or even three vacant lots. Every block seemed to have at least one. In the past, they were overgrown with weeds, covered in trash, home to rats and raccoons and possums. And what Green's group has done is to systematically work its way through the city, Cleaning up the lots, planting grass, putting up low fences.

[Keith Green]

And we started seeing a dramatic change. Lots were being maintained. People started using the lots.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And when you say people started using them, how were they using them?

[Keith Green]

Well, people. Kids were playing football, People were having barbecues on the sites, Horses raising on vacant lots.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Horses.

[Keith Green]

Horses.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

In the history of the program, they've cleaned up 17,000 lots. Charles Branis, the pioneer of the work, led a study to see if cleaning up vacant lots lowered the homicide rate. When you fixed up a neighborhood, what happened to gun violence? It went down 29%. Now, what's the best way to describe this kind of anti crime intervention? It's broken windows only, not broken windows. As a grand metaphor, as a hysterical leap that sees a man urinating on a sidewalk and says, we have no choice but to lock him up. No broken windows as a literal call to action. You see the lot full of weeds and trash and you pick up the garbage and mow the grass and put a fence out front. Religionist History is produced by Nina Byrd Lawrence with Ben Dadaff Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Shakerji. Fact checking by Sam Russek. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mastering by Echo Mountain Engineering by Sarah Bruguer and Nina Bird Lawrence. Production support from Luc Lamond. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix and as always, El Jefe, Greta Khan. I'm Malcolm Glapho.