Broken Windows Turns 25
by Charles Upton Sahm, City Journal, Spring 2007
And it has worked wonders on both coasts.
Twenty-five years ago, social scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist (and Manhattan Institute senior fellow) George Kelling first introduced the phrase “Broken Windows” into the public policy lexicon. In a pathbreaking Atlantic Monthly article, Wilson and Kelling pointed out that people were likelier to vandalize a building with one broken window than a building with none, since a broken window sends the message that nobody cares, encouraging vandals to act on their destructive impulses. Similarly, they suggested, if a community tolerates quality-of-life offenses, such as drug use and prostitution, it signals to all potential lawbreakers that it doesn’t care what happens to it; more serious crime will soon result.
In the early nineties, the chief of New York City’s transit police, William Bratton, put the Broken Windows theory into practice. With Kelling as consultant, Bratton began to go after the fare evaders, aggressive panhandlers, pickpockets, and other petty (and not so petty) criminals who had turned the subway system into what he called “the transit equivalent of Dante’s Inferno.” Bratton also had cops enforce anti-loitering laws to steer the homeless away from the subways and toward social services. Homeless advocates and civil libertarians fought him every step of the way, but Bratton prevailed, bringing order to the chaotic system. Sure enough, not only did minor crime plummet; serious crime did, too, and ridership soared. In nabbing low-level offenders, Bratton also discovered that many of them were wanted for much more serious crimes.
A few years later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani chose Bratton as his top cop and charged him with leading a similar revolution above ground. The rest, as they say, is history. With Broken Windows as a key part of a broader reform of policing (including the introduction of new accountability measures and computer analysis of crime patterns), the Giuliani era saw serious crime fall 65 percent in Gotham, sparking a citywide revitalization.
Bratton is now the chief of police in Los Angeles, where he has successfully employed many of the tactics that worked in New York. His latest challenge is restoring order and civility to Skid Row, a section of downtown L.A. that may be the nation’s largest homeless encampment and open-air drug market. As Kelling, again a consultant to Bratton, puts it, Skid Row is “perhaps the only place in the United States that could compete with the old New York City subway system in the magnitude of its sheer lawlessness, pathology, and tragedy.”
Six months ago, Bratton launched an initiative in Skid Row that includes both stepped-up law enforcement and social outreach. The initiative has added 50 officers to the area’s regular police contingent to target not only drug-related crime but also misdemeanors like littering, property defacement, and theft. So far, they’ve made some 5,000 arrests, mostly for felony narcotics sale.
Read the full article in its entirety over here.
And it has worked wonders on both coasts.
Twenty-five years ago, social scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist (and Manhattan Institute senior fellow) George Kelling first introduced the phrase “Broken Windows” into the public policy lexicon. In a pathbreaking Atlantic Monthly article, Wilson and Kelling pointed out that people were likelier to vandalize a building with one broken window than a building with none, since a broken window sends the message that nobody cares, encouraging vandals to act on their destructive impulses. Similarly, they suggested, if a community tolerates quality-of-life offenses, such as drug use and prostitution, it signals to all potential lawbreakers that it doesn’t care what happens to it; more serious crime will soon result.
In the early nineties, the chief of New York City’s transit police, William Bratton, put the Broken Windows theory into practice. With Kelling as consultant, Bratton began to go after the fare evaders, aggressive panhandlers, pickpockets, and other petty (and not so petty) criminals who had turned the subway system into what he called “the transit equivalent of Dante’s Inferno.” Bratton also had cops enforce anti-loitering laws to steer the homeless away from the subways and toward social services. Homeless advocates and civil libertarians fought him every step of the way, but Bratton prevailed, bringing order to the chaotic system. Sure enough, not only did minor crime plummet; serious crime did, too, and ridership soared. In nabbing low-level offenders, Bratton also discovered that many of them were wanted for much more serious crimes.
A few years later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani chose Bratton as his top cop and charged him with leading a similar revolution above ground. The rest, as they say, is history. With Broken Windows as a key part of a broader reform of policing (including the introduction of new accountability measures and computer analysis of crime patterns), the Giuliani era saw serious crime fall 65 percent in Gotham, sparking a citywide revitalization.
Bratton is now the chief of police in Los Angeles, where he has successfully employed many of the tactics that worked in New York. His latest challenge is restoring order and civility to Skid Row, a section of downtown L.A. that may be the nation’s largest homeless encampment and open-air drug market. As Kelling, again a consultant to Bratton, puts it, Skid Row is “perhaps the only place in the United States that could compete with the old New York City subway system in the magnitude of its sheer lawlessness, pathology, and tragedy.”
Six months ago, Bratton launched an initiative in Skid Row that includes both stepped-up law enforcement and social outreach. The initiative has added 50 officers to the area’s regular police contingent to target not only drug-related crime but also misdemeanors like littering, property defacement, and theft. So far, they’ve made some 5,000 arrests, mostly for felony narcotics sale.
Read the full article in its entirety over here.
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