In the early '80s two American criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published the so-called broken-windows theory. It was based on research that observed that when kids threw rocks at a vacant building and broke a window and the window was then not fixed, the remaining windows would soon all be broken as well. However, if the one window was fixed immediately the others would remain intact.

They were able to prove that if you deal with small crimes, it puts a stop to larger ones and lawlessness in general. This was proven effective by a man called William Bratton who was hired in 1990 to reduce the 15 000 felonies (major crimes) per annum happening on the subway system in New York City.

Despite enormous backlash from officials and the public, who wanted grand steps that would attract media attention, he asked his existing law enforcers to simply stop vagrancy at the stations, arrest those who jumped the turnstiles or urinated in public. These seemingly small steps (with very little additional cost) led to a 50% reduction in major crimes in the subway system in just 27 months…