The “broken windows” theory states that tolerating or ignoring very minor crimes breeds a culture where people think they can get away with more serious crimes, and that police should harshly enforce all laws even minor ones.
To get my bias out of the way I feel it probably just makes the public hate cops and view them as an occupying force instead of public servants, and probably hurts public cooperation with reporting more serious crimes.
But I’m interested to see if there is any hard data on it either way.
I myself have mixed reactions to it and think that it’s always best to be careful about automatically excepting “studies” either proving or disproving it without looking over the studies.
That said, I’m not sure how many cities in the 90s saw the really dramatic drop that New York City saw. Sure others saw “comparable” drops but that’s always a bit of a loaded term that we used in sales all the time to bullshit customers.
Here’s an article arguing that Broken Windows was vindicated.
I came to the “broken windows” theory from a different direction, because it was already standard accepted theory in “Library Science”, and I’d seen a minor demonstration in the Men’s Toilets of the Old Engineering Building.
The textbooks for Librarians asserted that you had to patrol, clean and repair your back shelves, because if you didn’t your problems would escalate to illegality, including sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.
This offered an explanation for what I’d seen with graffiti: Clean areas remained clean. Single examples of graffiti sparked small explosions of graffiti.
I think there is room for discussion about effective means of policing, and/or oppressive policing, and if NY policing was example of one, or the other, but I’m always irritated that this is cast as a discussion of “broken windows”, when it is clear that the phrase is being used to cover discussion of something rather different.
It would seem to me that we shouldn’t have laws except those that are worth enforcing, since realistically ANY law can result in a person’s death. As we saw with the utterly stupid “Loosies” law. I’m not saying that we should have a standard that we shouldn’t pass any law we aren’t willing to kill for, but you certainly have to be prepared to have people use violence on your behalf to enforce any law, even minor laws. So it has to be worth it.
To me, the debate over broken windows policing is stupid for this reason. If one doesn’t think the police should enforce these laws, then the laws should be repealed. Otherwise, they only bind the law abiding. If grafitti artists and subway toll jumpers aren’t worth using force on, then everyone should just be allowed to do it. Opposing broken windows policing just says that the law abiding must not do these things, but the criminal element will be permitted to do so unmolested.
Maybe a variable policing policy should be in effect. I’m sure there’s an algorithm for it already.
When crime breaks the threshold in percentages of populous in a given area, go into full policing effect until it calms down to normal parameters. Then go back into normal mode.
Its all in the stats.
Hell, taxes should be variable and tied to the GNP, to keep budgets in a more controlled balance than what it is now.
The problem with the approach is the ‘harshly’ part. It seems we can’t enforce laws without imposing maximum penalties which can have a worse effect than ignoring the crimes. IMHO if a kid breaks a window he should be made to work to pay for repairing it.
Emphasis mine. You claim you’re not saying that “we shouldn’t pass any law we aren’t willing to kill for” but then you go on to say pretty much exactly that, on the basis that violation of any law inevitably leads to violence.
Again, emphasis mine. This time you seem to be saying that if we’re not willing to tolerate police violence for, say, the offense of jaywalking or speeding, then these laws should be repealed.
Here’s what’s wrong with both those concepts: how about the radical idea that police should always respond with appropriate force, or lack thereof? You seem to think that police are incapable of behaving that way, and indeed in some cases it seems that they are, but only because they’re not sufficiently accountable – indeed they are almost completely unaccountable – to such a degree that they quite literally get away with murder. And the problem is greatly complicated by racial undertones and other stereotypes where cops have a prejudicial image of “those kinds of people” who cause all the trouble, and treat them accordingly without cause from the first moment of encounter. Michael Brown was initially stopped for jaywalking, and though it was a complicated escalation it appears to have begun with the officer being unreasonably hostile and belligerent. Eric Garner was stopped for literally nothing at all – because he had a prior history, because he still existed, and because “broken windows” was the order of the day.
Yes. Looking at this from a medicalish standpoint, we have to consider the dose. A small amount of a medication may be very good at get excellent results, while a larger dose ends up with significant side effects, adverse events and risk of death. It’s not enough to find research showing “broken windows” policing to be effective, we must also find that the correct dose to stay in a the range of acceptable side effects and adverse events.
Also, in keeping with the medicine analogy, we’re testing a cocktail without first testing each ingredient. So we don’t really know which things are helping, or helping the most.
Cleaning up graffiti, arresting people for loose cigarette sales and fining them for littering may all be under the umbrella of “broken windows policing,” but they’re all separate interventions that might be better studied on an individual basis. It may be that one or two of them is doing a great deal of good with no measurable harm at all, and one or two of them no good or even harm.
the key words here are “seems to be”. We have one person running around the country making a great deal of noise with no review of facts prior to opening his mouth.
Regardless of the crime committed the problem does not start with the police. It starts with the person resisting arrest. That’s not to say there are not better ways of dealing with arrest procedures. There will always be better ways of doing stuff. Always. It doesn’t change the core problem and that is resistance to arrest. Obey the law and bitch about it later with a lawyer. Don’t get in a physical confrontation with the police.
No? Not ever? And you know this to be true despite all the documented incidents of excessive police force and violence, some of which resulted in death, and historic police bigotry against minorities?
anyone who lives in a city knows how fast things go downhill when laws are neglected. It’s not as easily recognized in rural areas because things are spread out but it’s easy to see in a neighborhood full of broken windows.
What doesn’t make the news in cases like Ferguson are what people in the neighborhood think of the suspect. If as the video showed he was a brute who got his way through physical intimidation then It’s logical to assume he made life unpleasant for others in a similar and illegal fashion. But because of outside factions like Sharpton he is transformed from criminal to victim.
My understanding of the original idea was that enforcement would go hand-in-hand with building relationships between cops and the community. Once folks could see the results of proportional response, they would be more inclined to communication.
Despite the above studies showing that crime does not migrate (what, the serious criminals go straight?), BWP is a large contributor to gentrification. If the entire community is forced out, the accompanying crime may be too diluted or outside the range of the study.
Right, that’s your debate. The “all or nothing” card. Here’s a news flash. There are bad cops.
what I know to be true is the evidence as presented in the cases discussed. Your opinion of historic disparities applied to these cases is an attempt at broad brushing this into racial discrimination. Everything that happened to Brown and Garner are the direct result of their own actions and not the color of their skin.
It would never occur to me to slam the door on a cop and grab his gun. It would never occur to me to resist arrest. If I was stupid enough to walk down the middle of the street I sure as hell wouldn’t argue with a cop about it. I’ve had run-ins with bad cops. They were rude and obnoxious and IMO spoiling for a fight.
The actions started with Brown and Garner. If there is any bigotry involved in these cases than it started with the stereotyped views of cops. It serves no purpose to focus on the wrong cases when there are others worthy of debate.
Looking at Garner there are all sorts of issues that can be addressed. The tax on cigarettes created an instant black market for them. It was predictable. It made it harder for poo people to buy them and created an unnecessary enforcement issue.
Police take-down tactics have evolved over the years and are based on the idea that the faster you take someone down the less problems down the road. Use of stun guns and wrestling techniques replaced night sticks and guns. Somewhere in this thought process we lost the idea of matching up results with the severity of the crime. We can see this was addressed with high pursuit cases. It took a number of fatal crashes to push the issue forward. It creates too much risk to the public at large to chase cars at high speeds over minor offenses.
There’s a thread here about how the UK looks at arrest procedures. I think they should be looked at with the idea of adapting them to this country. They’re more in line with the philosophy of disengaging high speed pursuit to avoid harming people unnecessarily. There will always be gray areas but if we can apply a systematic thought process into the decision making process.
I don’t think it would be difficult to develop better techniques for dealing with minor offenses that will allow police to do their job while at the same time reducing the amount of physical confrontations.
