Pay Phones: The Scourge of the City?

The Mayor seems disposed to do anything conceivable to fight violent crime, except put more police on the streets. We've seen him blame t-shirts for lawlessness in Boston, and now he's focusing on pay phones. The theory, as detailed in a story in today's Globe, is that drug dealers and prostitutes use pay phones for their business and congregate around the phones.

When Bostonist lived in a poor immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn, we recall pay phones' being used mostly by regular people who couldn't afford a home phone, but no matter. The real question, we think, is what difference this latest crime-fighting move will make. Will the absence of pay phones prompt drug dealers and prostitutes to abandon their trades for legitimate employment? Will junkies be moved to get clean by the lack of cheap calling options? Call us cynical, but we think not.

Image: The latest cause of crime in Boston.