There was once a world polluted with graffiti and trash, where people would get away with petty crimes like subway fare-beating. For the citizens of New York City in the 1980s, this world is not so hard to imagine, given that it was their backyard. The 1980s New York City crime rate had reached what Malcolm Gladwell would refer to as a 'tipping point,' for in the early 1990s, the crime rate dropped so dramatically, people would look back on the major crimes like subway shootings and think 'how on earth did that happen in New York City?' Malcolm Gladwell's essay "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime" gives readers a possible explanation as to how a change like this can happen. More importantly, the essay is an environmental argument, with varying kinds of a seemingly endless amount of evidence, which suggests crimes can be prevented depending on what the atmosphere is like where present-day and potential criminals are populating.
             Gladwell's central argument was the theory of the Power of Context, which indicates that the circumstances people are in have an affect on how they act. Nearly all people "are powerfully shaped by their external environment" (300). Just as when people are hungry, they tend to eat: when children are abused they tend to abuse their own children. They see it as an "okay" thing to do. Their physical condition has put them into an altered mental condition, which leads to other kinds of problems. Why should Gladwell's argument be relevant to us? He shows us why, right from the start of his essay.
             Gladwell begins with the telling of an event that took place in a New York subway in December 1984: Bernie Goetz, a middle-aged white man, shot four black teenagers that were trying to mug him, before they showed any physical violent threat. Back then, the case was a puzzler; many people did not know whether to ...