I remember visiting nyc and seeing people shooting up in the street while the police were watching. Obviously the problem is lack of enforcement- and if petty crimes aren’t enforced even with just small punishments, then more serious crimes accelerate.
For readers who run across this, this is referred to as the Broken window theory:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
And despite the commenter stating it as fact, both here and elsewhere, the idea is very much controversial, and far from proven.
I think he's pointing out that people who commit serious crimes usually have a prior history of smaller, petty crimes that they were not given meaningful punishment for.
The data certainly supports this observation, and I can dig out supporting evidence if it's in doubt (at least in NYC, Dublin, and London. I'm not familiar with SF).
No, I'm not. He specifically mentioned broken window theory elsewhere.
> The data certainly supports this observation,
There are multiple interpretations of the data, and the Wikipedia page I cited goes through the many possibilities.