🧵 WHAT IS THE BROKEN WINDOWS THEORY? 🧵 Farage mentioned in the debate about how dealing with lower level crime such as shoplifting and graffiti could enable government to deal with more serious crime. This is called broken windows theory, and here's how it relates to crime:

The theory argues that there is a domino effect to crime. Namely, visible disorder and crime invites more disorder and crime. An abandoned building with a broken window that doesn’t get repaired can invite more broken windows, causing a sense of decay in an urban area.

This feeling of decay and, in turn, neglect invites graffiti, which invites squatters, which invites drugs, which invites gangs. As the dominoes fall, one small sign of decay invites a dozen others and attracts the kind of people who are comfortable with disorder and crime.

But it also drives people out. People who want orderly clean environments in which to live and raise a family leave. Which, in turn, allows these areas to be left completely in the hands of criminals, squatters, drug addicts and others attracted to disorder and chaos.

This theory, published by two sociologists named James Q. Wilson and George Kelling has been taken seriously before and when accepted, presented the blueprint of how to deal with crime. Who took it seriously? Enter Republican Mayor of New York (1994 - 2001), Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani came into office at a time when NY was racked with crime. Theft, murder, gangs, bus stations full of beggars and drunks, Bryant Park was an open-air drug den. You get the picture. Giuliani saw this and ran on sorting out the seemingly uncontrollable crime in the city.

Giuliani appointed an acolyte of Kelling, a man named William J. Bratton, to serve as his police commissioner. Paired with a 35% increase in the number of police, the two men knuckled down on public drunkenness, graffiti, fare dodging, illegal nightclubs, drugs dealing, etc.

The result? Violent crime declined by more than 56% compared to 28% nationally. Property crimes tumbled by 65% while they fell only 26% nationally. Public spaces were reclaimed, low-level crime not tolerated and criminals locked up away from civilised society.

In Britain, there is similar feeling of decay as there was in 90s New York. Shoplifiting is borderline legalised, you can smell weed in public places and disorder feels endemic. And yet what is proposed? Mental health hubs, youth centres, knife bins. Unserious wet nonsense.

What is needed is to deal with crime as it's supposed to be dealt with - seriously. It isn't just an inconvenience in our daily lives but a threat to the already fragile social order of this country. More police. More prisons. More arrests. Less tolerance.

Maybe the broken windows theory of crime, which Farage alluded to, needs to be taken seriously here as it was taken by Giuliani in the 1990s in New York. Shoplifiting: stopped. Disorder: punished. Windows: fixed.