NOLA crime….

RJ in Lafayette said

I would welcome data that the broken windows theory has been proven wrong, though it is certainly unpopular in academic circles because of the amount of police contact with young men of color. But on an intuitive level, it makes sense to me.

Also, there was recently a great piece in the NY Times over the great success Houston has had in reducing the number of homeless on the streets

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When we moved to our house 10 years ago, the block was pretty rough. We were one of the first homes to be renovated. There was section 8 across the street that literally provided curbside sales of sex and drugs. At one point there was quite the fight between two young women in front of our home. There were easily 75 people there to watch it go down. After one of them was stabbed in the leg, it really started to escalate and threatened to turn into a riot. I was on my front porch watching this when one of the instigators was encouraging another to grab one of my sidewalk bricks to smash some cars. I simply piped up to tell them to leave my bricks out of it as I had just laid them. The oddest thing happened. The one being encouraged to do the damage protested that she could not complete the task because 'the man needs his bricks'. And that was the end of their conversation. There was no smashing of cars because my bricks needed to be in their place. I think there's something to the idea of the proper place of things and minimal societal expectations. My brick placement possibly stopped a riot. A small bit of order in the right place tempered the chaos.