Studies Show 'Proactive Policing' Works, But Social Cost Less Clear

Any American who pays attention to law enforcement has heard of the strategies: "broken windows," "stop and frisk," "zero tolerance." These are all variations on what's broadly known as "proactive policing": efforts to seek out and prevent the causes of crime before it happens, as opposed to a more reactive policy of just sending police when called.

During the 1990s and 2000s, these approaches were widely credited for bringing down crime rates. But in the years since Ferguson, Mo., charges of racial profiling caused proactive policing to fall out of favor. Some critics say the methods don't even work as well as advertised, and they point to the fact that the murder rate stayed low in New York even after police curtailed the "stop and frisk" tactic (more on that below).

And yet in other cities, the rollback of these methods has coincided with disturbing spikes in violent crime. Last week I reported from murder-plagued Baltimore, where the Freddie Gray riots and a Justice Department investigation pushed the department to end tactics that critics labeled "zero tolerance." Former police officials are furious, saying the abandonment of those methods has cost lives.

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