Posted on 03/12/2011 1:29:50 PM PST by Gondring
Notwithstanding his status as America's greatest thinker on crime, punishment and social order, James Q. Wilson's toleration for minor deviancies, his own and other's, is notable.
[...]
Mr. Wilson is most famous for the phrase "broken windows," but he is quick to point out that it didn't originate with him. Philip Zimbardo of Stanford conducted an experiment in which he found that a car parked on a sedate street in a middle-class New York neighborhood would sit unvandalized for days—that is, until Mr. Zimbardo himself came back with a hammer and broke the first window.
[...]
"The biggest change in policing in this country that's occurred is usually associated with Bill Bratton. That's a correct association. He made a huge difference. But people misstate what the change was. They say he adopted the 'broken windows' theory. Well I'm not sure he did, and if he did, I'm not sure it made much difference to the crime rate. What he really did, his fundamental contribution, was to persuade the police that your job is not to make arrests. Your job is to prevent crime. You will not be rewarded for having more arrests, but for bringing down crime. That was the fundamental change."
[...]
Today, he says, we know a great deal about the genetic and familial factors that help determine why some are criminals and some aren't—a subject covered in his magisterial book, "Crime and Human Nature," written with Richard Herrnstein. We know that, [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Heh. I thought this would be about Bill Clinton...
He is one who defined it downward!
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