The Economist reports that the broken windows theory of policing is correct.
I think some theories are controversial only because the people who start the controversy have never maintained a household. Anyone who maintains a system, whether a computer or a household, knows that an ordered system tends toward disorder, and that disorder tends to encourage further disorder.
The acceptable level of disorder varies, but the trends should be obvious.
(Of course, it may be they simply have no ability to recognize the obvious, or prefer to argue against the policy prescriptions derived from the observation, rather than the against the theory itself.)
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