Best I can tell, "broken windows" policing does sort of work to reduce crime rates, though it probably also gets more credit than it should.  The theory behind it is that you can reduce crime by reducing "disorder."  There's a logic to this that can't be dismissed.  If millions of people living in New York City really internalize the idea that the city cannot be governed, then the city will be harder to govern.  So, you set the police against some of the cosmetic stuff -- graffiti tagging, public urination, turnstile hopping, kids tossing bricks at windows with no intent to break and enter -- and the more serious crimes fade away too.  Getting rid of the "anything goes" mentality engages law abiding citizens and dissuades law breakers.

At the same time, it's too pat an answer.  The link between minor disorder and serious crime is anything but proven.  It also happens that New York City, the best example of "broken windows" policing we have, saw its crime rates drop during a long economic boom period where things went particularly well for both wall street and global city real estate.  It might well be that things were bound to improve for New York City, so long as the economic rewards persisted.  Though, to be fair, the link between crime and economic development is as fraught as the link between crime and disorder.

Another thing... in the time that crime rates fell in New York City they also fell nationally.  It could be that, even if a view of society evolving towards something better is naive that we have, over time, made progress on some major, if unresolved, issues.

Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York City as something of a progressive rebuke to the technocratic Michael Bloomberg years.  The knock on de Blasio was that he would, with his hippie mentality, plunge the city back into the chaos of the 1970s.  This is a little ridiculous.  Our new mayor is a real estate mogul.  He is  decamillionaire, at least, if you include his Brooklyn real estate.  He is a smart man who I am proud to support but he is no hippie.  On the crime front, he countered criticism that he would bring New York back to the blackout riots by hiring Bill Bratton, the architect of broken windows policing, as his new police commissioner.

Since then, we have had some incidents.  First, the Brooklyn district attorney has stated publicly that his office will not prosecute people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, unless there is some other crime involved.  Bratton responded by... changing nothing.  His police still make marijuana possession arrests in Brooklyn even though they know that charges will not ever be filed.

Police recently got into a violent physical altercation with a woman grilling food in front of her home.  It is technically illegal to set up a grill on a New York City sidewalk but, um... it isn't a crime worth police violence, is it?  Separately, a man died after being put in a choke hold by police.  His crime?  Selling loose cigarettes to people.  There is a black market in cigarettes in New York City.  It is the result of rational but very high taxes on cigarettes.  It is not worth killing or even attacking anyone over.

Mayor de Blasio says the law is the law.  Bratton says the law is the law.  In many ways, I sympathize. The laws should change, but that doesn't happen on the streets. On the other hand, Reason magazine is right to call enfrocement of some of these laws, especially with violence, petty and an affront to the poor.

I think that even if broken windows policing works that it should be dropped.  Every enforcement encounter between the police and a citizen is a potential tragedy.  You can stop those tragedies by reducing the number of encounters.  That means telling the police to back off.  If every law isn't enforced at every second we will not wind up in chaos.  "Broken windows" might work but it is, by any measure, disproportionate.