What turning a blind eye to urban disorder is doing to London

There is a price to be paid for tolerance of low-level crime.

- Adrian Wooldridge

Every day, London becomes a bit more disorderly. The police report that shoplifting increased by more than 50 per cent in 2024, a far sharper increase than in other regions, and thefts such as pickpocketing increased by 41 per cent, with mobile phones plucked like low-hanging fruit. Transport for London (TfL) calculates that fare dodging costs the transit system £400 million (S$697 million) a year, but the real figure may be much higher.

But these crime figures capture only a small proportion of the disorder. Delivery drivers cycle at high speed, often on the pavement, frequently scattering pedestrians in their path. The bikes have electric motors and thick tyres; the drivers usually wear masks or balaclavas to conceal their faces, regardless of the heat. The sickly sweet smell of marijuana is ubiquitous in large parts of London (and certainly in Clapham where I live).

Why is life in London deteriorating at such a pell-mell speed? And what can be done to improve it?

The best answer to both questions can be found in a surprising place—an essay published 30 years ago in an obscure educational periodical by Mr Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then the senior US senator from New York, entitled Defining Deviancy Down.

Mr Moynihan argued that the supply of "deviant" behaviour in the US was increasing far more rapidly than our ability to cope with it. (By deviant he meant lawbreaking and public disorder rather than unconventional sexual behaviour).

Urban Americans, and particularly New Yorkers, were being subjected to such a level of lawlessness—littering, turnstile-jumping, drug taking, shoplifting and, later, mobile phone theft—that both the authorities and regular citizens were giving up trying to control the supply of disorder and were instead rationalising it.