When Sohrab says "we learned long ago" that cracking down on small disorder leads to a decline in major crimes he's referring to Broken Windows Theory which is an infamous piece of popular pseudo-science.

First, it is empirically false ...
@ebruenig @SohrabAhmari
2/
The empirical analysis to look at here is Harcourt's *The Illusion of Order* (& other writings).

One upshot from that worthy study: other cities that did NOT implement broken windows crackdowns in the 90s also experienced similar or larger declines in crime @BernardHarcourt
3/
Second what counts as "disorder" conceptually?

The concept looks colorblind but is in fact racist & anti-poor when operationalized. Poor people's crimes count heavily (broken windows, public drinking, jumping turnstiles) & the full force of police is brought down on them...
4/
Meanwhile, many crimes more frequently perpetrated by the wealthier (and in the US whiter) citizenry are NOT classified as disorder that must be eradicated w/ zero-tolerance (e.g. paying the nanny or gardener under the table) even when such crimes cost the state far more money
5/
There is in fact an entire zone of tolerated illegalities among the wealthy--it is widely known, for example, that their drug use (on college campuses, at high end hotels, clubs & homes) is not sentenced or treated as zero tolerance.

@BernardHarcourt is also superb on this.
6/
In *We Built Reality* I argue at length that Broken Windows was part of a larger technocratic, pseudo-scientific politics that made mass incarceration & militarized policing on (some) small crimes appear "neutral" and "rational" policy.

See ch 5: "Sciences of Zero Tolerance"
7/
There's no small irony that the new Catholic far Right (Ahmari, Deneen, Vermeule) is entangled in highly technocratic forms of thinking that share much with various forms of the liberalism & the modernity they spend so much time maligning.

I have treated the others elsewhere.
8/
What can simply be said here to my fellow Catholics: Theirs is a false rebellion & a false alternative to our current political woes.

They rightly see some thing has gone wrong but have not spent enough time learning from those who saw the problems w/ neoliberalism long ago.
9/
Lastly: Happy Mother's Day!

Begin to try to love (and this means understand) your neighbors mothers and children as much as yourself and you may be a first step down the road of calling yourself "Christian"...
You can follow @jasonwblakely.
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