The Economist handicaps the coming London mayoral race, noting correctly that Boris Johnson currently leads Ken Livingstone in the polls but by no means has things sewn up. But the newspaper’s house politics skew the coverage badly as the article uses this gem of circumlocution to limn Johnson’s achievements as mayor:
Crime has continued to fall and minor improvements have been made to public transport, including a cycle-hire scheme and the end of the hated “bendy” bus.
As much as it may grate on them, the Economist should have acknowledged a key reason why crime is down and public transport quality is up under Johnson: He prohibited drinking on trains and buses. This was a political risk that did not endear him to libertarians. Indeed, some of the opposition went so far as to have a protest/party the night before the ban went into effect. The resulting alcohol-fueled violence and destruction was a vindication for Mayor Johnson.
The amazing drop in crime in New York City started with a change in how low-level antisocial/criminal behavior in the subways was policed. As has happened in London, crime first started to drop in what became a widely used zone of civility. Johnson clearly learned from the New York experience and London has benefited both in terms of fewer assaults on public transport riders and staff and in a greater sense of safety among those who rely on buses and the tube.
The Economist opposes prohibitions on psychoactive substances on principle, but that shouldn’t stop them from admitting when a well-reasoned ban has proved a success. Londoners know better: Three years on, a remarkable 87% of them support the policy.
Tags: alcohol, boris johnson, drug legalization
Hi Keith, do you have any evidence for how much the drop in crime was due to the ban on drinking in the tube?
And what about crime on public transport?
Has drinking really declined on public transport?
With the football fans crowd, I do wish they would ban drinking on trains, as well. Stuck Manchester to London when Man U or Man City is playing away at Wembley or Emirates or Stamford Bridge is a really unpleasant experience.
Interestingly had bad experiences with rugby fans as well, who are generally a more sedate lot (being bigger, they hold their liquor better, I suppose).
There’s a difference between prohibition and regulations based on time, place and manner.
Keith: What explains the simultaneous drop in crime nationwide? Might it be this? That is, the first cohort of males to grow up after lead was no longer added to gasoline came of age at the same time as the stricter enforcement in NYC, which was more visible so got the credit?
hey, speaking of lead, does anyone know how many countries still use leaded gas? I sure hope someone is working on that.
From wikipedia:
”
As of June 2011, unleaded automotive gasoline is available almost universally throughout the world and the only countries in which leaded gasoline is the only type available are Burma and Afghanistan; Leaded gasoline also remains available in Algeria, Iraq, North Korea, and Yemen.
”
Afghanistan and Iraq! Fine nation building the US is doing there! I guess that’s what happens when the administrators of a new colony all claim to be libertarians and are actually large corporation shills. After all, god forbid we use our influence in the area to make it a better place by teaching them how to write environmental laws.
Thanks for the wiki link.
Thing is, I think leaded gas needs to actually be banned, not just subjected to competition. I wonder if it’s cheaper, too.
But, this is a more positive answer than I expected.
Marcel — Mark Kleiman thinks that played a role, but the problem is that in a number of years NYC was a huge chunk of the national crime drop. Unless we speculate that lead dropped there many times more than any other city, it just doesn’t explain the data
“The amazing drop in crime in New York City started with a change in how low-level antisocial/criminal behavior in the subways was policed. ”
Well….maybe:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073_pf.html
As an Air Force Officer, I was stationed at RAF Greenham Common in the late 80s (years after the big protests) and regularly rode trains into London with friends. There was an incredible amount of public drinking on the trains, often after soccer games. Since I like my beer, for me to notice it means it was pretty bad. I was coming back to Newbury one night and some drunk was loudly going through the cars and basically terrorizing people. A friend of mine finally got tired and said something along the lines of, “Hey dude, knock it off.” The drunk immediately straightened up and proceeded to have a very friendly conversation about places he’d traveled in the U.S. He was a schoolteacher. So I do think that the idea of promoting a particular expectation in a particular area is helpful. I suppose a counterexample is that the last time I was in Berlin (a few years ago), people were allowed to travel in their subways with open bottles. Although there was public drunkenness you didn’t see loud displays and anger (could just be a small sample size). Anyway, time, place and setting contributes remarkably to public behavior (including behavior influenced by the use of alcohol and other drugs).
Britain has a problem with public binge drinking. That is strikingly obvious (to honest locals, and to foreigners like yourself). Brits abroad in the ill-fated stag and hen dos in Prague, Vilnius etc. are the terror of those places. It’s embarassing to be of the same nationality.
Your friend could just as easily had his nose broken- had the schoolteacher been with friends, he might have.
I am not sure how we institutionalized this culture of public excess, but you see it from the poshies at the Ascot Horse Races and Oxbridge student parties right down throughout the white collar classes- upper, middle and lower classes. Basically only immigrant groups like Asian moslems seem to refrain from it.
Generally I find Germans drink much more slowly, are much more aware of their behaviour, and just not given to excess.
We are like the Scandinavians when they are free from their punitive liquor prices, but we do it *everywhere* and *everywhen*.
The presence of drunk and impaired people on public transit attracts other criminals, because of their very vulnerability.
Having the unfortunate experience of riding night BART trains home from university, all too often I saw obviously well-off people in some degree of stupor, and always contacted BART police about it, in an attempt to prevent their being robbed (or worse). Allowing on-board consumption of alcohol would have increased the frequency of these sightings, in addition to making me even more fearful for my own safety, not to mention suffering the increase in offensive odors and bodily emissions.
Drunks frighten me. They are unpredictable and have lost their social inhibitions, and don’t even register that they are utterly disgusting. I do my best to avoid them by avoiding places where drinking takes place, but this should not include my having to also avoid public transit. The more places where drinking is NOT allowed, the better, and especially when those drinking are quite likely heading to a parking lot to get in their car and drive home.
“…The amazing drop in crime in New York City started with a change in how low-level antisocial/criminal behavior in the subways was policed..”
“Upon his election, mayor Rudy Giuliani famously embarked on a crusade against squeegee men as part of his quality-of-life campaign, claiming that their near-ubiquitous presence created an environment of disorder that encouraged more serious crime to flourish.”
Actually David Dinkins started a lot of this.
But we can’t tie it to the drop in crime rate. Not directly. It may have constituted a ‘nudge’: for example turnstile jumpers were often on the way to committing worse crimes.
But there were crime drops in other places.
It’s undoubtedly true Giuliani’s near police state tactics made NYC a much nicer city, much more civilized.
Whether they caused a drop in serious crime is another matter. The latest serious study says it is possible, but cannot be proven.
The factor that sticks out there (besides looser abortion practics post Roe v. Wade) is the drop in the lead content in the bloodstream of urban dwellers.
Keith
I’ve seen no evidence this is enforced.
Have you?
Seems to me drunk people on public transport are still drunk people on public transport.
I’ve got no evidence the amount of drunkeness or drunken behaviour on public transport has reduced. Do you?
Increases in fares have, however, reduced the number of riff-raff who can *afford* to take public transport. The Tube is certainly better than the buses in this regard (over twice as expensive).
And, in addition, the 73 bendy bus was known locally as the ‘Seventy Free’ in a riff on the cockney accent, because so few people paid — street people would hop on and off for short journeys by the back entrances without paying, text their friends if there were police spot checks in action.
So ending the bendy buses has also improved things.
You’re repeating Rudy Giuliani’s claims that his policies caused the drop in crime in NYC, but the same drop happened at the same time throughout the United States.
FAIL.
The motto of this site is apposite here. The NYC crime drop is not a “claim” any more than climate change is a “claim”; both are established fact verified by countless independent analysts. And the size of drop was uniquely large, accounting in some years for a significant fraction of the entire national crime drop. A good overview can be found here
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/aug/14/can-you-believe-the-new-york-miracle/?pagination=false