[dpkirchner]

> Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse.

That this is not the obvious conclusion is alarming. We've been talking about the costs of poor social safety nets and high income inequality for decades.

[anotherhue]

I know of a few European countries that have very strong safety nets, and this behaviour is significantly on the rise there also (first hand experience). There has been a slow-motion withdrawal of enforcement for 'small' crimes which I think leads to larger ones ala the 'broken window'. I think part of this is because it is so arduous a process to convict & incarcerate someone.

A popular one: 225 previous convictions: https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41055134.html

[kennywinker]

Broken windows policing is a garbage + debunked theory about crime, btw. It “worked” in NYC where it was famously deployed, because we were in the middle of massive decrease in violent crime. Not because it worked.

[seanmcdirmid]

There is the broken window fallacy, and the broken window fallacy fallacy:

> A 2015 meta-analysis of broken windows policing implementations found that disorder policing strategies, such as "hot spots policing" or problem-oriented policing, result in "consistent crime reduction effects across a variety of violent, property, drug, and disorder outcome measures".[36] As a caveat, the authors noted that "aggressive order maintenance strategies that target individual disorderly behaviors do not generate significant crime reductions," pointing specifically to zero tolerance policing models that target singular behaviors such as public intoxication and remove disorderly individuals from the street via arrest. The authors recommend that police develop "community co-production" policing strategies instead of merely committing to increasing misdemeanor arrests.[36]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

[kennywinker]

if you read the abstract of the 2015 study you’re quoting from:

> The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem-solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at particular places.

That doesn’t sound like broken windows policing. That sounds like fixing actual broken windows.

[seanmcdirmid]

Nuance. Yes, you can do broken window policing wrong by not actually fixing broken windows.

[soco]

Cost cutting on places where it shouldn't happen? Like education, justice, integration and such...?