Background
Broken Windows theory was first coined by the criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will assume that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and a sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the streets on which it faces, signaling that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive begging, are the equivalent of broken windows meaning invitations to more serious crimes.
Implications
Muggers and robbers will typically think that they reduce their chances of being caught or identified, if they operate on streets that seem to be in poor condition. The thinking is that if the neighborhood cannot keep bothersome beggars from annoying people walking by, then it is even less likely that someone will call the police or interfere in case of a mugging.
This portrays a view of crime to be an epidemic, that crime can be contagious. It can start with a broken window and spread to an entire community. The spark to engage in a certain kind of behavior, actually comes from a feature of the environment.
The Broken Windows theory also applies to other areas of our lives. For instance if 1 or 2 of your housemates never take out the trash and it starts to pile up, everyone is more likely to do the same. Over time, more things will start to slide as a consequence of this, which will render the house dirtier and less pleasant as time goes by. A broken build in a programming project should be fixed sooner rather than later, otherwise, more and more people are going to check in poor code. If you feel out of shape, start working out, otherwise you will soon let it slide even more in terms of workout, diet, self-respect etc. The realization here is: fix “the broken windows” early on, before your and others’ mindset lead to damage spreading to more vital areas.
Example Story of “Broken Windows”
Another type of broken windows is fare-beating. Some people may simply jump over the turnstiles, while other will lean back towards them to force their way through. When even a small number of people start cheating the system, other people who would typically not otherwise consider evading the fare, will join in. The reasoning being that if some people were not going to pay, then they should not either, and then this would spread and the problem compound. By cracking down on fare-beating behavior in New York, in the 1990s, they found that 1 out of 7 arrestees had an outstanding warrant from a previous crime, and 1 out of 20 was carrying a weapon of some sort. As a result, they were not only avoiding fare-beating, but more importantly preventing more serious crimes from some of these perpetrators to be enacted.
The Broken Windows Theory approach in the subway system in the 1990s was a great success, crime declined significantly, and it was applied all across New York. The crime epidemic was reversed through minor adjustments in the immediate environment.
Change in Perception of Crime
Broken Windows Theory suggests that a criminal is not someone who acts for fundamental, intrinsic reasons and who lives in their own world. Rather, it is someone acutely sensitive to their environment, who is alert to all kinds of cues, and who is prompted to commit crimes based on their perception of the world around them. It rests on the notion that behavior is a function of social context. In some sense, one could say that our inner states are the result of our outer circumstances. The field of psychology has numerous experiments that demonstrate this.
One such example is an experiment at Stanford that was performed to figure out why prisons are such nasty places. Is it due to prisons being full of nasty people, or because prisons are such nasty environments that they make people nasty? People applied to be part of a trial with a mock prison, and the 21 people deemed most normal in terms of mental state (based on psychological tests) where selected. They were arbitrarily split into two groups, guards and prisoners. After only six days, the guards had evolved such cruel and sadistic behaviors towards the prisoners, that many of the prisoners simply could not take it any more due to “extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety“. The conclusion is that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions (regardless of our genes, upbringing, friends, etc.).
There is a world of difference between being inclined towards crime and actually committing a crime. For a crime to be committed there needs to be something extra, and what we are learning is that this may be as a simple and trivial as everyday signs of disorder like graffiti and fare-beating. This is a positive and helpful insight, as we can fix broken windows and clean up graffiti, and thereby change the various signals that invite crime in the first place. Thus, crime can not only be understood, but to a large degree even be prevented.
Studies of e.g. juvenile wrongdoing and high school drop-out rates, demonstrate that a child is better off in a good neighborhood and a troubled family, than in a troubled neighborhood and a good family(!)
When considering the Stanford prison experiment and the New York subway experiment, they suggest that it is easier to be a better person on a clean street or in a clean subway, than in one littered with trash, graffiti and where misdemeanors are ongoing.
Conclusion
The Broken Windows theory suggests that small signs of disorder and neglect, such as broken windows, can lead to more serious crime and disorder in a neighborhood. By fixing the small problems, we can prevent more significant issues from occurring.
📚 Sources and References
- “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” (2000) by Malcolm Gladwell
- “Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order And Reducing Crime In Our Communities” (1998) by George L. Kelling and Catherine M. Coles
- Michael Massing “The Blue Revolution” in New York Review of Books (1998)
- “The Turnaround: How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic” (1998) by William Bratton and Peter Knobler
- “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison” in Interpersonal Journal of Criminology and Penology (1973)
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