Advocates of watering down sentencing law and dismantling "broken windows" policing speak of "nonviolent" crimes as if they were harmless. Unfortunately a large portion of the population is buying it. "Property crimes" are not harmless. They work a major degradation of the quality of life. Nicole Gelinas has this article in the City Journal focusing on the impact on bicycle riders.
As violent crime remains at historical lows in much of the West, criticism of Broken Windows policing has grown more insistent. Skeptics, including New York mayor Bill de Blasio's new top deputy, J. Phillip Thompson, claim either that preventing small, nonviolent crimes wasn't a big factor in preventing larger violent ones, or that Broken Windows' disproportionate targeting of minorities isn't worth the benefits, even if they exist. This debate ignores a key point: preventing "minor" crime is a social good in itself. Cities plagued with small-scale crime cannot maintain a good quality of life for their residents. Advocates of bike-share programs are discovering this anew, as the private-sector companies that offer the services, from Paris to Baltimore, have pulled out or scaled back because they cannot keep up with the destruction of their bicycles.
My wife and I both lived in NYC in the late 70s. It was deplorable. I did not return until 2003, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the transformation. There is no one reason for these things-but certainly the “broken windows” policy had to be pt of it. These small crimes have a cumulative effect. We are seeing this in San Francisco now. Last visited NYC in 2016. I sensed, for the first time, some regression. I hope I’m wrong.