KEY POINTS:
I didn't have the opportunity to visit New York in the 80s but, by all accounts, I didn't miss much. You rode on the subway at your peril, the place was filthy and people on the streets were aggressive. Then along came Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who embraced a crime fighting policy known as Broken Windows.
Although the term has become synonymous with Giuliani, it was William Bratton, the head of the Boston transit police in the 1980s, who should be given credit for the application of the policy. It was Bratton who adapted a real-life version of an academic theory that posited that people are more likely to commit crimes in neighbourhoods or areas that appear unwatched and uncared for by residents and the authorities. The idea is that if you let vandals break windows or commit graffiti, they will progress to more serious crime.
Bratton put the theory to work when it came to policing the transit and, under his watch, crime fell by 27 per cent. Giuliani, who was running for mayor of New York, liked what he saw and enthusiastically embraced the Bratton style of policing. When he won the mayoralty, the first thing he did was make Bratton chief of the NYPD.
The rest is history - serious crime dropped by half and murder by 70 per cent and New York's spectacular turnaround has been lauded throughout the world. There were a few critics, mainly left wing academics, who argued that the criminalisation of the quality-of-life offences - aggressive begging, the window washers at the traffic lights - was the criminalisation of poverty.
More recently, critics have argued that the increase in the number of police officers (the force grew by more than a quarter between 1991 and 1998), the fall in the crack cocaine trade as a result of a saturation of the drug in the market and an ageing population would also have been major factors in New York's dramatic decrease in crime.
More controversially still, there's an argument that legalising abortion in the 1970s meant that there was a corresponding drop in crime in the 1990s - that thinking being that high-risk mothers opting for abortions in the 70s lowered the number of criminals coming of age in the 90s. And that those states that legalised abortion before 1973 - California and New York - saw a drop in crime earlier than the rest of the nation.
Whatever the reason, I guarantee if you get to visit New York, you'll feel safer there than in this country. It's a lot cleaner and there's no graffiti - not in the city or subway, not even in the project housing areas. We saw plenty of signs offering rewards of US$300 for information leading to the successful prosecution of graffiti vandals; and maybe that's the reason. Or maybe people are proud of their city and remove graffiti as soon as it appears.
There's no litter. Again, hefty fines appear to be enforced if someone is seen littering. There is still an incredibly high police presence and that has to make a community feel safer. And, despite the fact that this city suffered a devastating blow with the Twin Towers attacks just six years ago, New Yorkers are helpful, friendly and courteous.
Nearly 40,000 people ran the New York marathon last Sunday; many thousands more came out to support the runners or to act as volunteers to ensure the race went smoothly.
That makes for a hell of a lot of people, mess and disruption to one of the world's major cities.
By 10pm, the streets and Central Park were spotless and the traffic was running smoothly. I can only imagine what it would be like for a New Yorker to visit New Zealand. They would feel like they were going back in time 20 years. Many of the people I spoke to expressed a desire to visit come here - they'd heard it was beautiful and that the people here are friendly.
I replied that I hoped one day they would come, but inside I was praying that somebody in this country has the vision to effect the same sort of changes that transformed NYC.
Oh, sure, the academics may be right that criminal activity can rise to hit a critical point at which stage the old "what comes up, must come down" adage swings into play.
Or that our ageing population includes the crims too, who will be too arthritic to climb into bedroom windows or too short-sighted to measure out the quantities need to create P. But why wait?
If we want to live in a safer, cleaner, more civilised society then we need a visionary leader, plentiful resources and a common desire not to live among filth, grime and crime.
