A July 31 rally against police brutality at City Hall (photo: Ben Max)
After 20 years of Republican mayors, Bill de Blasio won election on a remarkably progressive platform. Unlike his four previous predecessors, de Blasio pledged to raise taxes on the rich to pay for social services that would benefit the rest of the city. De Blasio's universal pre-K and middle school initiatives are designed to provide important supports for the families and young people most in need. This effort to reduce inequality stands in sharp contrast to the fundamental politics and social theory driving "broken windows" policing. The death of Eric Garner has brought this fundamental contradiction to the fore and demands a substantive response from the mayor.
The Broken Windows theory was first laid out as a kind of hypothesis-by-analogy by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in the Atlantic Monthly in 1982. They presented existing behavioral research that showed that when a car is left unattended on a street it is usually left alone, but if just one window of the car is broken, the car is quickly vandalized. The lesson: failure to indicate care and maintenance will unleash people's latent destructive tendencies. Therefore, if cities want to establish or maintain crime-free neighborhoods they must take action to ensure that residents feel the pressure to conform to civilized norms of public behavior. The best way to accomplish this is through the use of police to remind people in subtle and not so subtle ways that disorderly, unruly, and anti-social behavior is unacceptable. When this doesn't happen, people's baser instincts will take hold and predatory behavior will reign in a return to a Hobbesian war of all against all.
The emergence of this theory in 1982 is tied to a larger arc of urban neoconservative thinking going back to the 1960s. Wilson's former mentor and collaborator, Edward Banfield, himself a close associate of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, parented many of the ideas that came to make up the new conservative consensus on cities. In his seminal work of 1970, The Unheavenly City, Banfield argues that the poor are trapped in a culture of poverty that makes them largely immune to government assistance:
"Although he has more "leisure" than almost anyone, the indifference ("apathy" if one prefers) of the lower-class person is such that he seldom makes even the simplest repairs to the place that he lives in. He is not troubled by dirt or dilapidation and he does not mind the inadequacy of public facilities such as schools, parks, hospitals, and libraries; indeed, where such things exist he may destroy them by carelessness or even by vandalism."
Unlike Banfield, who in many ways championed the abandonment of cities, Wilson decried the decline of urban areas. Along with writers like Jim Sleeper (The Closest of Strangers) and Fred Siegel (The Future Once Happened Here), Wilson pointed a finger at the twin threats of failed liberal leadership and the moral failings of African Americans as the cause. All three of them argued that liberals had unwittingly unleashed urban chaos by undermining the formal social control mechanisms that made city living possible. By supporting the more radical demands of the later urban expressions of the Civil Rights Movement, they had so weakened the police, teachers, and other government forces of behavioral regulation, that chaos came to reign.
What was needed to stem this tide was a reassertion of social control mechanisms by empowering the police to not just fight crime but to become agents of moral authority on the streets. The new role for the police was to intervene in all of the quotidian disorders of urban life that contributed to the sense that "anything goes."
The Broken Windows theory magically reverses the well understood causal relationship between crime and poverty, arguing that poverty and social disorganization are the result of, not the cause of, crime and that the disorderly behavior of the growing "underclass" threatens to destroy the very fabric of cities.
Wilson, following Banfield, believed strongly that there were profound limits on what government could do to help the poor. Financial investment in the poor would be squandered, new services would go unused or be destroyed, and the poor would continue in their slothful and destructive ways. Since the root of the problem was either an essentially moral/cultural failure or the lack of external controls to regulate inherently destructive human urges, then the solution had to take the form of punitive social control mechanisms to restore order and neighborhood stability. This is why police are arresting people for grilling on the sidewalk, drinking on their front stoop, and, yes, selling loose cigarettes.
The result of this approach has been the mass criminalization of the poor, who in New York City are overwhelmingly people of color. Hundreds of thousands of mostly young black and Latino men are put into the criminal justice system for mouthing off in class, taking up two seats on the subway, and possessing marijuana. In some neighborhoods over 50% of young men are caught up in the criminal justice system. It is a system that drives them from school, undermines future employment prospects, and immerses them in a world of gangs and violence.
Proponents of Broken Windows policing claim that it is responsible for the city's dramatic crime drop. Even a cursory look at the facts shows this can't possibly be true. The crime drop is an international phenomena that has occurred in hundreds of cities that never used Broken Windows based policing. Even scholars who point to a special role for the police in New York, like Franklin Zimring (The City that Became Safe), argue that it was not Broken Windows based policing that made the difference. And further, if Broken Windows policing was supposed to lead to a revitalization of poor communities, why is it that poverty and inequality in New York are growing? Gentrification has improved some physical communities, but through displacement, not the advancement of the people already there.
Disorder can be a real threat to urban stability. Mass homelessness, untreated mental illness, and youth engaged in graffiti, performing on the subway, and dealing drugs on the street should be a concern, but the police are not the best, most cost-effective way to deal with these problems. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a revolving door criminal justice system that leaves most people worse off. Eric Garner had 30 previous contacts with the police and it did nothing to improve his life situation. The mayor's top criminal justice advisors know that we need to develop alternatives, but aggressive, invasive, and expensive policing is standing in the way.
This profoundly conservative view of the Broken Windows theory seems fundamentally at odds with the program put forth by the new mayor. De Blasio's goals are optimistic about the ability of government to make a positive impact on the lives of the poor. His educational programs are designed to provide developmental and social supports to help young people lead stable and productive lives without relying on constant police vigilance. It's time for the mayor to dial back "quality of life" policing and continue to invest in the lives of young people and the communities they live in, rather than relying on mass criminalization. He can't have it both ways.
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Alex S. Vitale is associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics. You can follow him on Twitter at @avitale.
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The following entry is part of The Small Business Corner, a collaboration between Gotham Gazette and GoBizNYC:
At a recent a press conference on the City's Sandy recovery progress, Mayor Bill de Blasio noted: "Relief can't come fast enough for homeowners and small business owners who have already waited too long." We cannot agree more. Twenty-one months after the storm, so much more remains to be done. The City needs to expedite programs, provide grants—even retroactively—and implement a better approach to resiliency planning in neighborhoods ravished by Sandy.
Revamping the "Build It Back" program is essential and has been a step in the right direction. Recently, NYC Housing Recovery reached out to our organization, the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, for assistance in bringing local contractors to the table to learn how they can provide services through the program. In addition, the City is improving the onerous procurement process for contractors so that they will get paid for their services in a timely fashion. This is encouraging.
That being said, the City needs to better coordinate with Federal and State agencies and comprehensively address the difficulties businesses have had when dealing with various layers of government.
For instance, the business recovery process needs to be streamlined so that allocated Community Block Development Grant (CBDG) funds actually get into the hands of businesses, which have struggled to recover on their own for almost two years. It is a real disgrace that of the $293 million dollars allocated for business recovery in New York City (as of April 1, 2014), only $3.5 million has been distributed to businesses. Bureaucratic bottlenecks must be resolved. In addition, an inventory needs to be done to assess how many impacted businesses did not come back or are teetering to stay afloat as well as where vacancies lie and opportunities exist.
Given that small businesses are the backbone of our economy, adjusting bureaucracy to meet the realities of small business capacity and accelerate business recovery should be a top priority for this administration. Such efforts will only make our local economy more resilient to future disasters.
The Staten Island community, through its strength, determination, and pride, has taken up the task of bringing back our neighborhood economies, one business at a time. But we can't do this on our own. We need this administration to step up with us and take a holistic approach to rebuilding and resiliency planning – not only on Staten Island, but in all of New York City.
Linda M. Baran is the President of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, the largest business organization on Staten Island. The Chamber is comprised of over 700 businesses, 80% of which are small businesses with fewer than ten employees.
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The Small Business Corner is a bi-weekly column featuring the opinions and perspectives of small business owners and advocates from the GoBizNYC network on the range of issues that concern the city's small businesses.
To all New York City small business owners and advocates: we hope this new platform, The Small Business Corner, will better enable you to engage in the local policy conversation and we look to you to support us in this endeavor by sharing your thoughts, experiences, and voices. To learn more about how you can be a part of GoBizNYC and participate in this effort, visit GoBizNYC.org.
A water main break in Manhattan (photo: Laura Shin)
Earlier this month, BNP Paribas plead guilty to money laundering and falsifying business records. The French Bank will pay $8.9 billion in fines, with approximately $4 billion directed to New York State and its municipalities. As politicians and civic leaders rushed to offer recommendations for directing this windfall, a consensus began to emerge: the construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of New York State infrastructure.
While the recent settlement is a significant sum, even if it is wholly applied, it will not be enough to address New York's aging and outmoded infrastructure. In New York City alone, thirty-seven percent of subway signals exceed their 50-year useful life; 63 percent of cargo facilities at John F. Kennedy airport are considered "non-viable" for modern screening; 24 percent of the water that enters distribution mains never reaches customers due to leaks and other diversions; 11 percent of bridges are structurally deficient; and nearly 60 percent of NYCHA buildings do not comply with Local Law 11 standards for exterior and façade conditions.
The Center for an Urban Future estimated that $47 billion is needed over the next four to five years simply to bring the city's aging infrastructure to a state of good repair. However, based on accumulated funding gaps and shortfalls in upcoming capital plans, unmet needs will reach $34.2 billion. To address this large and growing funding gap, it's imperative that city and state policymakers identify new dedicated revenue streams and ensure that existing revenue streams are not raided, as they have too often been in the past.
Sam Schwartz's "Fair Plan," for instance, would introduce new tolls on those East River bridges carrying vehicles into the city's central business district while sharply reducing tolls on five non-Manhattan bridges. Most importantly, the dedicated revenue from Schwartz's plan would generate $1.2 billion annually for transit projects and regional highway improvements.
For an additional dedicated funding stream, New York City should follow Seattle, Philadelphia, and 500 other cities in replacing its sewer charges - currently assessed at 159% of the water rate - with a more nuanced stormwater management fee. Property owners would be charged according to the percentage of rainwater captured on their lots (before it enters the city's overburdened sewer system). This would incentivize increased water retention on private property, with customers paying a lower fee as they introduce new green elements – trees, swales, porous pavement, green roofs. This could be coupled with a credit program to help customers finance the installation of green elements, with loans repaid each month via a utility or property bill.
Finally, while the BNP Paribas fine is often described as a "one shot deal", it too could be converted into a continuous, dedicating funding source. By depositing the $4 billion into an infrastructure trust fund, it could generate $200 million a year in perpetuity, assuming a conservative 5 percent annual return (the MTA, by comparison, assumes a 7 percent annual return on its pension investments). This $200 million is hardly pittance. In New York City, it would afford 800 new units of low-income housing, the resurfacing of 1,300 lane-miles of city streets, or 34 miles of reconstructed sewers each year.
Moving forward, political wrangling and posturing over court settlements – like the protracted dispute between Governor Cuomo and Attorney General Schneiderman over control of an earlier $613 million settlement with JPMorgan Chase – could be avoided if the state Legislature mandates that a fixed share of future court settlements be deposited into the infrastructure trust. This would help stabilize the state's critical infrastructure for years to come.
As the city and state consider these new funding streams, political officials should refrain from diverting or dipping into existing (and already insufficient) dedicated revenue sources - a practice that has been all-too-common in recent years. At the MTA, $30 million from the Metropolitan Mass Transportation Operating Assistance account was transferred to the state's General Debt Service Fund in 2014. Funds from the Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund have also been used to cover state budget expenses. In New York City, revenue dedicated to the water and sewage system is redirected to the city's expense budget through "rental payments." Since 2005, these rental payments have increased significantly, from $109 million to $183 million.
The city's airports have also been affected by political interference. While the airports generate significant revenues from landing fees, gate fees and other levies, $214 million at JFK was diverted to non-airport related activities between 2004 and 2010. Though federal regulations require airport operators to reinvest all airport revenue into their facilities, the Port Authority was granted an exemption. In several instances, area politicians have pushed the Port Authority to use funds generated by the airports to prevent toll and fare increases at other Port Authority-managed assets, such as the PATH train.
The protection of these dedicated revenue streams, as well as the introduction of new funding sources, should not be delayed. Without immediate, sustained, and generous investment in its core infrastructure, New York's quality of life and economic competitiveness will quickly diminish.
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Adam Forman is research associate at the Center for an Urban Future, a New York City based think tank. He is the author of "Caution Ahead," a report published in March by the Center documenting New York's infrastructure vulnerabilities.
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