I am sure readers are well conversant with the February 1969 'Time Magazine' study undertaken by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo where he left two identical cars in two very different neighbourhoods; one in the high-crime Bronx, New York, and the other in affluent Palo Alto, California.

Predictably, the Bronx car was vandalised almost immediately, while the Palo Alto car sat untouched for days. After a week, Zimbardo himself smashed part of the untouched car with a sledgehammer. Within hours, the previously safe neighbourhood turned into Bronx. By evening, the car was overturned; by the next morning, it had been stripped bare.

Building on this, criminologist James Q Wilson and George Kelling came up with 'Broken Windows Theory' in 1982. They argued that visible signs of disorder create more disorder and small, unchecked crimes lead to bigger ones. In 1994, NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton then used these findings to create a new policing strategy. His team cracked down on small offenses: graffiti, turnstile jumping, public drinking;........

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