“Broken Windows”by

James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling

Presentation by: Chris Strayer

A study and analysis of urban police foot patrol implementation to address public disorder and violent

crime.

Broken Windows

Wilson & Kelling’s Hypothesis

Concentrated community policing of perceived heightened social disorder in impoverished urban areas would improve the residents’ perceptions of

improved quality of life. As a consequence, by maintaining order, more violent crimes would be prevented.

Wilson and Kelling seem to be responding to the idea of Durkheim’s conception of anomie.

fixing broken windows + on-foot policing to prevent disorder= maintenance of social norms

Durkheim’s work on anomie suggests that Wilson & Kelling should expect that individuals’ behaviors and passions to be regulated by the social norms provided in the environment, thereby prevent more harmful crimes.

Methodology Philip Zombardo –experiments on vandalism “vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers – the sense of mutual regard and the obligation of civility – are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares’” (p.31)

Premise that one of people’s greatest fears is being “bothered by disorderly people” (p. 30) + conceptual framework that individuals will conform to societally established norms, if these norms are signaled within the environment.

Wilson & Kelling utilized first hand observation, interviews, and surveys to collect data.

Key Concepts• Fear stems from confrontation with incivility, which

leads to avoidance thereby weakening social controls (p.33)

• Differentiation of “regulars” from “strangers” Regulars = “decent folk” or those “who knew their place (p. 30) Strangers = foot patrolman’s jobs “to keep an eye on strangers”

to ensure widely understood rules were observed (p.30) “Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those who

bothered people […} were arrested for vagrancy. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.” (p.30)

Key Concepts (cont.)• Social norms of the environment were defined and

enforced collaboratively – police & “regulars” “The people of Newark […] assign a high value to

public order, and feel relieved and reassured when the police help them maintain that order” (p. 31).

• Within the community – disorder is perceived to be sequentially linked to crime “if a window in building is broken and is left

unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken[…] “one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing” (p. 31)

Conclusion: Police Central to Maintaining Order

• “The essence of the police role is maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself” (p. 34).

• “We must return to our long abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals [and recognize] the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows” (p. 38).

Implications of Broken Window Theory• Extensive application by criminal justice departments in large urban areas,

such as New York City and Albuquerque• Action research conducted in educational institutions and real estate settings• Criticisms: promotes overly aggressive policing (zero tolerance) (Sridhar),

racial and economic biases (Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004), potentially fallacious relations between correlation and causality (Thacher, 2004).

Additional Credits

Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2004). Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of “Broken Windows”. Social Psychology Quarterly, 67(4), 319-342.

Sridhar, C.R. (13-19). "Broken Windows and Zero Tolerance: Policing Urban Crimes". Economic and Political Weekly 41 (19): 1841–1843.

Thacher, David. (2004) "Order Maintenance Reconsidered”