Welcome back to the Tim Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show

today is Rafael Manguel, the Nick O'Neill Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing

editor of City Journal, and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice, is writing on crime, jail

violence, civil justice reform, and other criminalogical matters has appeared in the Wall Street Journal,

The Atlantic, the New York Times, and many other outlets in addition to City Journal.

Ralph is the author of Criminal Injustice, what the push for decarceration and deep policing

gets wrong and who it hurts most. Today, we're going to discuss his essay,

Can We Get Back to Tougher Policing, which appears in our spring issue and examines barriers

to enacting effective crime fighting policies. Ralph has been on the show before, and it's great

to have you back on. It's always great to be with you, Brian. Thank you.

So, you know, this essay is a very useful overview of where we are at this moment in criminal

justice policy in the country and in policing.

So 40 years ago, one of the most important public policy essays ever published appeared in the Atlantic,

and it was called Broken Windows.

It offered a simple but insightful idea, and this was authored by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson,

two noted thinkers on crime issues.

So this essay argued that public order matters.

Disorder leads to further disorder, and visible signs of disorder, if unaddressed,

tend to make an area more vulnerable to more serious crime.

So for listeners unfamiliar with this concept, I wonder if you can just give a summary of what

became known as the Broken Windows theory of policing and also how it worked when police

...