Federalist, August 9, 2024. When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York City in 1994, one of his top goals was reducing crime. This meant all crime, not just those that grab headlines but those at the pyramid’s base. He stated at the time: “Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”
The theory behind Giuliani’s approach wasn’t novel. Dubbed the “broken windows” approach, the theory was just as Giuliani explained it — laxity begets criminality — and at its core were more resources and arrests. According to a NBER paper on Giuliani’s methods: “the police force in New York City grew by 35 percent in the 1990s, the numbers of prison inmates rose 24 percent.”
The report argued that deterrence had a bigger effect than a growing economy. For New Yorkers, the results spoke for themselves: “Between 1990 and 1999, homicide dropped 73 percent, burglary 66 percent, assault 40 percent, robbery 67 percent, and vehicle hoists 73 percent.”
California Dreamin’
The other side of the country, however, presents a very different story. During Kamala Harris’ tenure (2011-2017) as state attorney general, California decided to break its own windows.
One of the drivers of California’s descent into dystopia has been the now infamous Proposition 47. On 2014’s ballot, it promised a win-win by “requir[ing] misdemeanor sentence instead of felony for certain drug and property offenses.” But it wouldn’t apply to those “with prior conviction for serious or violent crime and registered sex offenders,” and it dangled large budget savings, “potentially in the high hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” These “savings would be spent on school truancy and dropout prevention, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and victim services.”
If the ballot language sounded like a win-win, it paled compared to what it was dubbed: “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” A study by Human Impact Partners stated: “A Health Impact Assessment of reforms proposed by a state ballot initiative predicts the changes would reduce crime, recidivism, racial inequities in sentencing, and save the state and its counties $600 million to $900 million a year — but only if treatment and rehabilitation programs are fully funded and implemented properly.”
Curiously, despite her title and the proposition’s direct effects within her purview, Harris didn’t take a public position on the legislation — but she was responsible for writing its title and summary. It would hardly be the only occasion when Harris disappeared from her bailiwick during her tenure as attorney general.
With so much leftward wind billowing in its sails, Proposition 47 passed 59-41 percent. Some nonviolent property and drug crimes were reclassified into misdemeanors (including retroactively under defined procedures), and the now-infamous $950 threshold for shoplifting was established.
California Crime
Fast-forward a decade, and things haven’t panned out as predicted. Like California’s windows, Proposition 47’s promises were made to be broken. A 2023 Pacific Research Institute report summarized Proposition 47 as a desire to “reduce crime and rates of incarceration.” As with all such attempts to have cake and eat it too, “Unfortunately, the recidivism rates have not improved and for the Prop 47 cohort of offenders has actually worsened.”
Specifically, “Nearly 3/4 of all Prop 47 thieves and drug dealers are re-arrested. Roughly the same number were re-arrested before Prop 47’s passage and they reoffend at a higher rate than former state prison inmates. Worse, this has been occurring for 9 years
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