America is a land that is seemingly in love with incarceration. More people are in prison per capita in the US than in any other country. It is a fact that feeds the prejudice of the rest of the world of a violent, gun-toting nation that is only too quick to judge.

But dig a little deeper and an anomaly emerges. New York City has bucked the trend by sending fewer people to prison. Could its approach teach Britain a lesson or two?

The Commission on English Prisons Today visited the city to discover how it had managed to reduce crime by 70 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Crime rates continue to fall and communities are safer. Yet far fewer people convicted of low level offences such as vandalism are being sent to prison, the commission found.

Exactly how New York achieved this is hotly debated, with many groups keen to take credit.

One of the most high-profile anticrime measures to be imposed in New York in recent years was the “broken windows” policy of zero tolerance in the 1990s. The theory is that visible signs of crime, however small, contribute to creating more crime and should not be tolerated.

“The police in New York are convinced that ‘broken windows’ was the key to cutting crime rates,” David Wilson, the chair of the commission, says. He believes that this “quality of life policing” was one factor in a bigger series of changes, sparked when the city reached a “tipping point” in its prisoner numbers.

The prison population on Rikers Island, which incarcerates those convicted of minor offences, reached 23,000 in the 1990s with prisoners overflowing on to barges moored alongside the island. Its population now rests at about 14,500, after a drive by authorities to divert nonviolent offenders away from prison and invest in treatments to tackle the underlying issues: mental health problems, drug addiction and poor housing, the commission says.

In the city’s “problem solving courts”, judges hand out an array of remedies from community service to on-site education projects, treatment of drug abuse and counselling. At a youth court, teenagers convicted of low-level offences “sentence” their peers. Those who agree to take part do not get a criminal record.

Professor Wilson says that many of the punishments were highly controversial. “A drug addict convicted of a low level offence might be asked to write an essay on their treatment as a ‘punishment’. Can you imagine the media reaction?” he said.

It is a long-term approach. One judge told the commission: “We are in the business of second, third and fourth chances . . . [of] success.”

In addition to a sceptical press, the authorities also had to persuade communities that prison was the wrong way to tackle the problem. Authorities use mapping techniques to work out where newly released prisoners will reenter the community and target investment into these areas, nicknamed “million dollar blocks”. “New Yorkers want to see results,” Professor Wilson said. “So much money was being invested in sending people to prison they began to say, instead of investing in criminal justice, why not invest in community infrastructure?”

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