Great Performance !

Again, it may help to look backward and see why crime had risen so much in the first place. From 1960 to 1985, the number of police officers fell more than 50 percent relative to the number of crimes. In some cases, hiring additional police was considered a violation of the era’s liberal aesthetic; in others, it was simply considered too expensive. This 50 percent decline in police translated into a roughly equal decline in the probability that a given criminal would be caught. Coupled with the above-cited leniency in the other half of the criminal justice system, the courtrooms, this decrease in policing created a strong positive incentive for criminals.

By the 1990s, philosophies—and necessities—had changed. The policing trend was put in reverse, with wide-scale hiring in cities across the country. Not only did all those police act as a deterrent, but they also provided the manpower to imprison criminals who might have otherwise gone uncaught. The hiring of additional police accounted for roughly 10 percent of the 1990s crime drop.

But it wasn’t only the number of police that changed in the 1990s; consider the most commonly cited crime-drop explanation of all: innovative policing strategies.

There was perhaps no more attractive theory than the belief that smart policing stops crime. It offered a set of bona fide heroes rather than simply a dearth of villains. This theory rapidly became an article of faith because it appealed to the factors that, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, most contribute to the formation of conventional wisdom: the ease with which an idea may be understood and the degree to which it affects our personal well-being.

The story played out most dramatically in New York City, where newly elected mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his handpicked police commissioner, William Bratton, vowed to fix the city’s desperate crime situation. Bratton took a novel approach to policing. He ushered the NYPD into what one senior police official later called “our Athenian period,” in which new ideas were given weight over calcified practices. Instead of coddling his precinct commanders, Bratton demanded accountability. Instead of relying solely on old-fashioned cop know-how, he introduced technological solutions like CompStat, a computerized method of addressing crime hot spots.

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Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything