The amount of credit Mayor Giuliani deserves in lowering crime in the 1990s was a topic of discussion yesterday in Midtown at a forum sponsored by the American Sociological Association titled “Why Did Crime Decline in New York City?”

The panel discussion came during a week in which Mr. Giuliani, the leading Republican candidate in polls, has said he might tap his former police chief, William Bratton, for a federal position.

An epidemiologist from the University of Michigan, Sandro Galea, spoke first, arguing that the nexus between policing, disorder, and crime was “cloudy.” He interpreted his data as throwing doubt on the “broken window” theory that pursuing misdemeanor arrests vigorously works to lower homicides significantly.

Michael Jacobson of the Vera List Institute said putting into effect the theory must have a social cost, as so many young people then have criminal arrest records.

A professor at John Jay College, Andrew Karmen, argued that Compstat, the strategic system praised by Mr. Giuliani, has not worked so well in several other cities.

Following the program, the presider, Philip Kasinitz of the CUNY Graduate Center, told The New York Sun that the upshot of the panel was that policing strategies played a substantial role in reducing crime but that the interaction of various social conditions, such as change in drug use patterns, immigration, and gentrification, probably played a greater role. He said the panel showed the “great man theory” in reducing crime was overstated, but that the traditional social scientific view singling out social conditions had also been overstated.