Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

I am joined today by Professor Bernard Harcourt. He is a professor at Columbia University Law School.

He is also the founding director of the initiative for a just society at the Columbia Center

for Contemporary Critical Thought.

He has also served as a practicing criminal attorney.

He's here today because 20 years ago, he authored a book that I think he probably hoped would not have

to be read 20 years from its publication, but which does. And that book is,

illusion of order, the false promise of broken windows policing. Professor Parkport, welcome to

current affairs. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Nice to meet.

Am I right that you would have hoped that your book had slipped into irrelevance by now?

I would have thought, yes, I would have thought.

It was a kind of full-blown critique of this mysterious theory, the broken windows theory, 20 years ago. And I would

have thought that by now, we wouldn't need to return to these issues because the theory had been

buried and done with. But it seems to have a zombie life of its own. Well, I want to just,

you mentioned the zombie life. We saw the theory bubbling to the surface most recently.

Last week, or September 5th, the New York Times,

in an op-ed by Pamela Paul,

the solution to New York's transit problem is so obvious

no one wants to hear it,

in which she calls for a massive police crackdown on fair jumping in the New York subway.

And in support of her call for a massive police crackdown, she says,

Broken Windows Theory, as outlined by the social scientist James Q. Wilson and the criminology

...