Windows Broken Theory and Policing

Windows Broken Theory and Policing

Introduction

Two criminologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, concluded that the abandonment of the urban landscape, the atmosphere of anarchy and physical deterioration that occurs with bad government of a city, induce more people to commit crimes: if a window is broken street and nobody repairs, many of those who pass through here assume that no one is in charge, no one is responsible for that things are in order, and that a theft or something worse may then be committed without a penalty.

Discussion

It is a theory about the spread of immoral or antisocial behaviors. It originates from an experiment conducted by a psychologist at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo, in 1969. He left a car in the neglected streets of the Bronx in New York, with license plates pulled up and the doors open. His goal was to see what happens. After 10 minutes, people began to steal its components. After three days there was nothing of value. Then they began to smash it.

The experiment had a second part: they left another car, in similar conditions, in a wealthy neighborhood of Palo Alto, California, but nothing happened. For a week, the car remained intact. Then Zimbardo went further, and crushed body parts with a hammer. It was seen that the signal of honest citizens of Palo Alto expected, because after a few hours the car was broken as the Bronx (law.nyu.edu).

This experiment is the one that led to the broken windows theory, developed by James Wilson and George Kelling: if a building appears a broken window, and not fixed soon, other windows immediately end up being destroyed by vandals. Why? Because it is fun to break the windows, of course. But above all, because the broken window sends a message: there is no one to care for it.

The municipalities know this theory very well. When a graffiti ...