by Matt Barr

Broken windows and liberty

As Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani instituted the "broken window" approach to law enforcement. Direct efforts toward punishing and deterring highly visible, if less consequential, conduct like vandalism, graffiti, loitering and so on -- "quality of life" laws -- and the effect of the appearance of less crime will bolster the safety of the city across the board. Superficially, it sounds like public relations, but it's backed by some serious IQ points and, while this is a bone of contention, seems to have worked. Giuliani:

The idea of it is that you had to pay attention to small things, otherwise they would get out of control and become much worse. And that, in fact, in a lot of our approach to crime, quality of life, social programs, we were allowing small things to get worse rather than dealing with them at the earliest possible stage.... [W]e started paying attention to the things that were being ignored. Aggressive panhandling, the squeegee operators that would come up to your car and wash the window of your car whether you wanted it or not -- and sometimes smashed people's cars or tires or windows -- the street-level drug-dealing; the prostitution; the graffiti, all these things that were deteriorating the city. So we said, "We're going to pay attention to that," and it worked. It worked because we not only got a big reduction in that, and an improvement in the quality of life, but massive reductions in homicide, and New York City turned from the crime capital of America to the safest large city in the country for five, six years in a row.

You wonder if there's something behind it. You have to start with the premise that these crimes getting all the new attention are, indeed, already against the law -- in other words, it's not properly a debate over whether, say, prostitution should be legal, or vandalism be subject primarily to private compensatory suits, or whatever libertarian hoohah you want to inject into the whole thing.

I wondered whether to enhance liberty and respect for private property in the United States a similar approach might work. Again, start with the premise that there are already, for example, laws requiring businesses to accommodate the handicapped through designated parking spaces, and we're not taking the tack that there shouldn't be, we're trying to promote a view of already highly visible liberty issues that encourages a free market, liberty-centric approach. So here are three ideas.

Handicapped parking spaces (you may or may not consider it relevant that my wife has a handicapped parking permit) should be metered, with a permit excusing the bearer from payment. There should be a minimum charge based on traffic and lot usage. Removing a requirement that there be handicapped only spaces would inspire plenty of business owners to calculate the cost to their business of not having accessible spaces and remove them entirely. While, again, that's a libertarian ideal, we're going for visibility, here.

So the spaces that are required already are still required, but meters are installed. At a high-traffic site with long parking space usage, like your Wal Mart plaza, there would be a minimum charge of, say, $10 (the property owner/user could charge that amount or anything more). At a quicker in/out business like a dry cleaner's there would be a minimum, say, $2 charge. The formula is unimportant and could be tied to the current requirements for how many spaces a business must set aside.

Handicapped spaces are among the most visible restrictions on private property usage there are. This would promote the perception that the closest spaces to the entrance/exit are valuable, people who are willing should be able to pay to use them, and at the same time we continue to accommodate handicapped drivers by allowing them free use.

Speed limits should be recast as "statutory speeds" and utilized the way blood alcohol levels are now in traffic enforcement: as bright lines that enhance punishment rather than it being a crime itself to exceed the limit. Blood alcohol is probably a bad example unless I flesh it out: You are (barring random stops) pulled over not for driving drunk, but driving unsafely. If your blood alcohol level exceeds the state maximum, you are charged with driving drunk. If it doesn't, you have still driven in such a way as to make your officer ticket you for whatever moving violation: unsafe lane change, exceeding the speed limit, whathaveyou.

Under this scheme, traffic stops formerly for exceeding the speed limit would need to be independently supported by specific actions relating to unsafe driving. Weaving in and out of lanes, tailgating, excessive speed past a broken down vehicle, failing to slow or pull over for emergency vehicles, etc. If, and only if, the driver was also exceeding the "statutory speed" would there be an enhanced charge roughly equivalent to today's speeding. If you were not exceeding the statutory speed, you could be charged with whatever moving violation the officer observed, given a warning, whatever.

The visible part of this is changing "speed limit" signs to show that speeding is not mala in se, but rather only "wrong" because it is against the law (mala prohibitum) and only unsafe if otherwise your conduct while driving creates an unsafe condition. "Statutory speed" lets people know that speed "limits" are related to unsafe driving, not ticket revenue generators. This doesn't impact private property, but promotes the view of the law as protecting people against harm, and should incidentally promote individual responsibility and respect for the law.

Retail receipts, receipts we get for purchases at stores, restaurants, and so on, should include two itemized breakdowns of the source of the charge you've paid. The first should be a sales tax breakdown, showing how much of what's been paid (over a certain de minimus amount) goes to what particular government program. The second should be how much of the purchase price is required by the cost of the business owner's doing business in the state: compliance with regulations, business taxes, license fees, and so on.

The cost of doing business breakdown could be culled directly from a central state-level estimate maintained by, whoever, the state's department of revenue or secretary of state; or it could be whatever the business owner calculates (barring fraud). It should go without saying that seeing how much of the purchase price of a good or service is unrelated to its actual value would be a very visible and powerful message to consumers about the impact of government in their lives.

I'm not getting into here additional burdens these ideas would create (additional reporting requirements on retail receipts themselves add to the cost of doing business, and who buys and installs the parking meters?). And beyond a reality check to consider whether there's something that would render these ideas impossible, I'm also not getting into whether unintended or unanticipated consequences would render otherwise good ideas bad. These are simply ways to enhance the visibility of liberty and private property issues that would certainly (I think) promote a better societal approach to those issues in a broader sense, whatever else they might do. If you have other ideas, let me know what they are.

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