This may be a naive take, and I haven't been to NYC in a decade, but I think that number should ideally stay close to zero. There's a concentrated amount of surveillance, a gated entry, and limited escape options. Combine that with potentially stiff penalties for violent crime, that should be a potent deterrence.

We have access to crime data, but what about the data on failure rates of specific crime mitigation tools? Is there any way for the public to audit things such as the reliability of security cameras, or crimes that were solved with the help of surveillance footage, good samaritans, etc? If not, when was the last time someone tried to get that implemented? It probably wouldn't do much in the short term, but over time could drive optimizations.

I think it is an accumulation of small failures over time that don't seem worth mentioning individually, but in aggregate can have the most impact on the crime rate.

Take my ideas with a grain of salt though, I'm only a layman on the subject.

what do you mean "gated entry" and "limited escape options"? Like that if a crime happens, police should be able to stop the perpetrator immediately as they come out of any subway station? Sounds pretty optimistic to me.

I used the word “deterrence” though to close the thought :) people looking to do crime should find an easier place. But maybe it’s harder to get away with it on the streets of manhattan than on the subway, I’d have to ask a cop or a criminal to really know I suppose… I also heard sentences have been light in NYC, so maybe repeat offenders are everywhere and expect to eventually get caught anyway.

There’s no absolute need to guarantee or even catch the majority of them for a deterrence to be effective. But if it’s not effective (cameras broken, etc) then word will get around fast. That is the idea anyway.

But yeah I don’t have much confidence in government to do a great job there, unless the victim is a Fortune 500 CEO.