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The second law of thermodynamics says that systems naturally evolve toward states of higher entropy. Entropy, which is a measure of disorder, requires the application of energy to overcome it. To put it more simply, things tend to get disorganized unless we act intentionally to keep them organized.
This law applies to physics, but also in a sense to cities. Some recent events in and near Indiana’s capital city, Indianapolis, situated in Marion County, have sparked a debate about crime. In my view, it’s more a fundamental discussion about entropy.
The first incident happened a couple of weeks ago in Carmel, Indianapolis’s northern neighbor. An Indianapolis man was arrested for allegedly carjacking a father and daughter. Following the incident, the Carmel mayor publicly criticized the Marion County justice system, saying, “We have residents in central Indiana committing crimes, and Marion County can’t put them in jail and keep them in jail. It’s unacceptable.”
In response, the Marion County prosecutor said, “We need to make sure that we’re being accurate and honest about what’s actually taking place.” He noted that the Carmel suspect’s most recent theft case in Indianapolis was for stealing $6 from a tip jar. He went on: “The maximum punishment is the maximum punishment, and there’s only so much judges and prosecutors can do when they’re dealing with individuals who are charged with those low-level crimes.”
The second incident happened a few days later in a downtown Indianapolis parking garage where a young man was shot and killed on his way to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game. Again, criticism of the Marion County justice system erupted. The Marion County prosecutor responded to this criticism by pointing out that the suspect arrested in the shooting is only 14 years old and has no history with the justice system.
Following these events, others have chimed in. The Greenwood mayor, whose city is in Johnson County just south of Indianapolis, said “67% of our arrests are Marion County residents.” To the west of Indy, the Hendricks County prosecutor said, “You cannot argue that it is not true that Marion County criminals come into neighboring communities and commit violent crime there. That is a fact.”
Throughout this, the crime debate has gotten mired in the details of specific violent cases. That is not the only level of analysis, though. In a broad sense, what the criticism is really about is the level of entropy in Indianapolis. The critics are concerned that, governed by the second law of thermodynamics, entropy is spreading throughout Indianapolis and surrounding communities. With their criticisms they are intentionally applying energy to overcome that entropy.
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Charles Fain Lehman recently spoke at The University of Texas at Austin where he discussed the link between disorder (what I call entropy) and crime. Lehman argued that “small acts of disorder create a feedback loop where people in a neighborhood are driven out by disorder and the ratio of law-abiding citizens on the street to law-breaking citizens on the street shifts in a self-reinforcing cycle that leads inevitably to the collapse of a community.”
The corollary is that “the remediation of disorder reduces crime, and policing focused on reducing disorder also reduces major crime.”
Lehman went on to say that in recent times our urban society has become reluctant to deal with disorder. He said, “The wish to decriminalize disreputable behavior that harms no one, and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order, is a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community.”
Lehman added, “There is a public campaign that is asking you not to care about what happens to our cities. It is asking you not to care that people sleep in public, that people sell sex, that people do drugs. It is saying that you should not notice those things. … And my argument is that actually you as a member of the community with an equal right to enjoyment of the public space have every legitimate and objective reason to say, ‘No, I don’t need to put up with that.’ And I don’t need to vote for people. I don’t need to endorse political projects that hold that as a legitimate view.”
In our capital city the visible signs of disorder are not hard to find. On a visit to the city, you are likely to encounter homelessness, tent cities, the mentally ill, open-air drug use, trash and graffiti. Also, retail theft, vacant storefronts and pot-hole riddled streets. So far, the response to the fallout has not included a focus on such disorder. Rather, leaders have organized a “Regional Mayors Public Safety Partnership Summit,” designed to “address multi-jurisdictional crime, share intelligence and tackle the movement of repeat offenders across central Indiana.” Also, the FBI has announced a summer crackdown on violent crime in Indianapolis. This is all great, but regional summits and summer crackdowns are temporary patches.
The heart of the problem is the city’s disorder. Countering this disorder will not, of course, eliminate all violent crime. But the research and evidence suggest it will reduce it. And aside from the tremendous benefit of reducing violent crime, it will also make the city a nicer place to visit and live. The citizens, in addition to being safe, are entitled to cleanliness and unobstructed use of the public spaces they fund.
The second law of thermodynamics is unrelenting. Left alone, systems do not stabilize. They decay. The disorder in Indianapolis is not an anomaly; it is entropy doing exactly what physics predicts it will do. Order is an achievement, hard won and easily lost. Every clean street, every safe parking garage, every drug offense and petty theft addressed is a victory against entropy. The regional leaders in their discussions and work ahead must include fighting entropy as a top priority.
Physics, and recent experience, tells us what happens when they don’t.•
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Houchin is the Washington County Superior Court judge in Salem. He also is the publisher of Judex, a Substack newsletter on conservative judicial issues at judex.substack.com. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
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