With just two cars, psychologist Philip Zimbardo set the stage for the controversial “broken window” theory in the US.
In an experiment in 1969, Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University (USA), abandoned two broken and unlicensed cars in a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx borough of New York City and New York City, respectively. An affluent neighborhood in Palo Alto, California.
In just 24 hours, the car in the Bronx had its windows broken and all its spare parts stolen. In contrast, the car in the city of Palo Alto remained intact for more than a week. Only after Zimbardo smashed the car with a sledgehammer did a few people follow. Most vandals in both cities are described as “well-dressed, bright-faced”.
By 1982, 30 years after Zimbardo’s experiment, the results were echoed in a paper published in The Atlantic by social scientist George Kelling. In areas with high crime rates like the Bronx, Kelling says, where abandoned property is common, vandalism and theft happen faster because the community takes it for granted. course. However, these crimes can appear in any community if there are actions that show indifference.
According to Kelling, if in a crowded urban area, there are signs of crime and anti-social behavior but not handled for a long time, it will show the police’s laxity. This will motivate people to commit more serious crimes.
Kelling gives the example of a building whose windows were broken but were not soon repaired. Since this is a sign that no one cares about the building, vandals will tend to continue to destroy other windows. Finally, they may even break in, illegally occupy, or set fire to a fire if no one is in the building. Just like throwing garbage on the sidewalk, if not handled immediately, a few bags of trash will soon become a large landfill. As a result, people began to throw garbage arbitrarily and then break into cars.
Ultimately, Kelling concludes that police can create an environment of order and law compliance by focusing on petty crimes such as vandalism, public intoxication, etc., thereby helping to prevent prevent more serious crimes. This is also the basis of the criminological theory called “broken window”.
The “broken window” theory gets its name from the example that George Kelling used in his 1982 article (Image: iStock).
With a fresh approach, George Kelling ‘s theory quickly attracted the attention of policymakers. In 1993, Rudy Giuliani, the new mayor of New York City, used the “broken window” theory as the basis for implementing a series of “tough” policies against relatively less serious crimes believed to be influential. negatively affect the quality of life in the city.
New York City police began to crack down on crimes such as being drunk in public, peeing, drawing graffiti, smoking marijuana, and handling cases of homeless people voluntarily cleaning car windows and then killing them. demanded money from the driver. Police also closed many nightclubs that had seen many public disorder incidents.
The efforts of the new mayor and the New York police department appear to have been successful. According to a 2001 study on crime trends in New York, the number of crimes both minor and serious fell significantly after a series of new policies were enacted. Not only that, crime also tends to decrease in the next 10 years.
This shows that the policy based on the “broken window” theory has worked. Kelling’s work on this theory has subsequently become one of the most cited articles in the history of criminology and is sometimes referred to as the “Bible of police action ,” according to The Newyorker .
Today, the five major cities in the United States—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Denver—have all reported adopting at least some law enforcement tactics based on Kelling’s “broken window” theory. In all five cities, police focus on strong enforcement of the law on less serious crimes, according to Thoughtco.
Although widely supported, the “broken window” theory has also been criticized and questioned about its effectiveness and fairness in its application.
In 2005, Bernard Harcourt, a professor at the City University of Chicago Law School, published research with the conclusion that there was no evidence that the “broken window” theory of reducing crime was in fact, even though the idea appeared to be. very convincing.
Harcourt argued that New York City’s crime data for the period of application of the broken window theory had been misinterpreted. Although crime has decreased significantly in the areas where this theory is applied, it is also the place that is most severely affected by the cocaine problem. As cocaine addiction declines, crime decreases accordingly. The same phenomenon occurs in other cities across the United States. According to Harcourt, the crime wave in New York will certainly decrease whether or not the broken window theory is applied.
Others point to a number of other factors that can reduce crime, such as New York City’s unemployment rate, which fell 39% between 1992 and 1999.
The broken window theory has also been criticized for possibly encouraging discriminatory law enforcement. For example, following the police-related deaths of several young people of color accused of less serious crimes, a random “stop and search” of a suspect was perceived as racist because of the police presence. Police often view people of color as suspects in areas with low income and high crime rates.