Locking Them Up

Over the course of the last decade, I’ve periodically met with official visitors from the United Kingdom who have come to New York City to learn about its revival—specifically, about the city’s successful war against crime, which I’ve watched closely for the past 20 years. Most of these visitors had already heard quite a bit about the NYPD’s campaign against crime. As complaints of public disorder rose in the U.K., the press there featured more stories about what had happened in New York, where crime is now down an astounding 80 percent since the early 1990s. In a 2008 article in the BBC News’s Magazine titled “Where Is It Safe To Walk The Streets?,” the British home secretary, Jacqui Smith, admitted that she felt unsafe on London’s streets late at night, while her Conservative counterpart, David Davis, called it “shameful” that one could safely walk at night in New York but not in London.

Read the rest of Steven Malanga's City Journal article here.