The ideas in his 1982 "Broken Windows" article in The Atlantic influenced successful community policing efforts in cities including New York and Los Angeles. Last month, Detroit announced it was beginning its own initiative.

"He's just clearly one of the foremost social scientists of the second half of the 20th century," Skerry said. "He was a very on-the-ground kind of scholar and brought a great insight and common sense to things."

Wilson and co-author George L. Kelling argued in The Atlantic article that communities must address minor crimes and their effects, such as broken windows, to prevent larger problems from developing.

"I think Jim and I caught a wind," Kelling said in an interview Friday. "Up until that time in policing, nothing seemed to work. ... By the late '70s, policing was kind of looking for a new approach and community policing was kind of on the horizon, although not yet being really articulated."

Kelling said the article instantly resonated with law enforcement and also caught the general public's attention because the "broken windows" metaphor was so effective.

"That was pure Wilson," said Kelling, now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. "The thing about a metaphor is it takes a complex thing and simplifies it and makes it readily graspable."

It is unpleasant to study the details of crime and violence—and for this reason many of us never do. I am convinced, however, that some planning and preparation can greatly reduce a person’s risk. And though there are exceptions to every rule, I don’t believe that there are important exceptions to the advice I have given here. May you never have occasion to find it useful.

Set up a torrent tracker, get fined, go to jail.

Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.

Let's draw out the distinction.

The Pirate Bay guys were criminally prosecuted for....violating (largely obsolete) copyright. Almost no one in finance has been held even civilly liable for vastly more economically damaging actions.

On the one hand, we have damages worth maybe (maybe) a few million. On the other, a few trillion.

On the one hand, innovation and better music is stifled - benefits are foregone. On the other, reform of a broken banking system is stifled - losses are incurred.

That's everything that's wrong with the economy in two sentences: the ongoing inability of today's leaders to deal with 21st century economics.

The upshot of the ruling and the police's application of their "kettle" formula is that people thinking about embarking on demonstrations in the future may have to decide whether they want to be effectively locked up for eight hours without food or water and, when leaving, to be photographed and identified.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency

With a new analytical technique, a fingerprint can reveal much more than the identity of a person. It can also identify what the person has been touching — drugs, explosives or poisons, for example