Broken windows theory, academic theory proposed by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 that used broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighbourhoods. Their theory links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime. Broken windows theory had an enormous impact on police policy throughout the 1990s and remained influential into the 21st century. Perhaps the most notable application of the theory was in New York City under the direction of Police Commissioner William Bratton. He and others were convinced that the aggressive order-maintenance practices of the New York City Police Department were responsible for the dramatic decrease in crime rates within the city during the 1990s. Bratton began translating the theory into practice as the chief of New York City’s transit police from 1990 to 1992. Squads of plainclothes officers were assigned to catch turnstile jumpers, and, as arrests for misdemeanours increased, subway crimes of all kinds decreased dramatically. In 1994, when he became New York City police commissioner, Bratton introduced his broken windows-based “quality of life initiative.” This initiative cracked down on panhandling, disorderly behaviour, public drinking, street prostitution, and unsolicited windshield washing or other such attempts to obtain cash from drivers stopped in traffic. When Bratton resigned in 1996, felonies were down almost 40 percent in New York, and the homicide rate had been halved. The theory Prior to the development and implementation of various incivility theories such as broken windows, law enforcement scholars and police tended to focus on serious crime; that is, the major concern was with crimes that were perceived to be the most serious and consequential for the victim, such as rape, robbery, and murder. Wilson and Kelling took a different view. They saw serious crime as the final result of a lengthier chain of events, theorizing that crime emanated from disorder and that if disorder were eliminated, then serious crimes would not occur. Their theory further posits that the prevalence of disorder creates fear in the minds of citizens who are convinced that the area is unsafe. This withdrawal from the community weakens social controls that previously kept criminals in check. Once this process begins, it feeds itself. Disorder causes crime, and crime causes further disorder and crime. Scholars generally define two different types of disorder. The first is physical disorder, typified by vacant buildings, broken windows, abandoned vehicles, and vacant lots filled with trash. The second type is social disorder, which is typified by aggressive panhandlers, noisy neighbours, and groups of youths congregating on street corners. The line between crime and disorder is often blurred, with some experts considering such acts as prostitution and drug dealing as disorder while many others classify them as crimes. While different, these two types of disorder are ...

1. Broken windows theory, academic theory proposed by James Q.
Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 that used broken windows
as a metaphor for disorder within neighbourhoods. Their theory
links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent
occurrences of serious crime.
Broken windows theory had an enormous impact on police
policy throughout the 1990s and remained influential into the
21st century. Perhaps the most notable application of the theory
was in New York City under the direction of Police
Commissioner William Bratton. He and others were convinced
that the aggressive order-maintenance practices of the New
York City Police Department were responsible for the dramatic
decrease in crime rates within the city during the 1990s. Bratton
began translating the theory into practice as the chief of New
York City’s transit police from 1990 to 1992. Squads of
plainclothes officers were assigned to catch turnstile jumpers,
and, as arrests for misdemeanours increased, subway crimes of
all kinds decreased dramatically. In 1994, when he became New
York City police commissioner, Bratton introduced his broken
windows-based “quality of life initiative.” This initiative
cracked down on panhandling, disorderly behaviour, public
drinking, street prostitution, and unsolicited windshield washing
or other such attempts to obtain cash from drivers stopped in
traffic. When Bratton resigned in 1996, felonies were down
almost 40 percent in New York, and the homicide rate had been
halved.
The theory
Prior to the development and implementation of various
incivility theories such as broken windows, law enforcement
scholars and police tended to focus on serious crime; that is, the
major concern was with crimes that were perceived to be the
most serious and consequential for the victim, such as rape,
robbery, and murder. Wilson and Kelling took a different view.
They saw serious crime as the final result of a lengthier chain of

2. events, theorizing that crime emanated from disorder and that if
disorder were eliminated, then serious crimes would not occur.
Their theory further posits that the prevalence of disorder
creates fear in the minds of citizens who are convinced that the
area is unsafe. This withdrawal from the community weakens
social controls that previously kept criminals in check. Once
this process begins, it feeds itself. Disorder causes crime, and
crime causes further disorder and crime.
Scholars generally define two different types of disorder. The
first is physical disorder, typified by vacant buildings, broken
windows, abandoned vehicles, and vacant lots filled with trash.
The second type is social disorder, which is typified by
aggressive panhandlers, noisy neighbours, and groups of youths
congregating on street corners. The line between crime and
disorder is often blurred, with some experts considering such
acts as prostitution and drug dealing as disorder while many
others classify them as crimes. While different, these two types
of disorder are both thought to increase fear among citizens.
The obvious advantage of this theory over many of its
criminological predecessors is that it enables initiatives within
the realm of criminal justice policy to effect change, rather than
relying on social policy. Earlier social disorganization theories
and economic theories offered solutions that were costly and
would take a long time to prove effective. Broken windows
theory is seen by many as a way to effect change quickly and
with minimal expense by merely altering the police crime-
control strategy. It is far simpler to attack disorder than it is to
attack such ominous social ills as poverty and inadequate
education.
The theory in practice
Although popular in both academic and law-enforcement
circles, broken windows theory is not without its critics. One
line of criticism is that there is little empirical evidence that
disorder, when left unchallenged, causes crime. To validate the
theory in its entirety, it must be shown that disorder causes fear,
that fear causes a breakdown of social controls (sometimes

3. referred to as community cohesion), and that this breakdown of
social controls in turn causes crime. Finally, crime must be
shown to increase levels of disorder.
The strongest empirical support for the broken windows theory
came from the work of political scientist Wesley Skogan, who
found that certain types of social and physical disorder were
related to certain kinds of serious crime. However, Skogan
prudently recommended caution in the interpretation of his
results as proof of the validity of the broken windows theory.
Even this qualified support has been questioned by some
researchers. In a reanalysis of Skogan’s data, political theorist
Bernard Harcourt found that the link between neighbourhood
disorder and purse snatching, assault, rape, and burglary
vanished when poverty, neighbourhood stability, and race were
statistically controlled. Only the link between disorder and
robbery remained. Harcourt also criticized the broken windows
theory for fostering “zero-tolerance” policies that are
prejudicial against the disadvantaged segments of society.
In his attempt to link serious crime with disorder, criminal
justice scholar Ralph Taylor found that no distinct pattern of
relationships between crime and disorder emerged. Rather, some
specific disorderly acts were linked to some specific crimes. He
concluded that attention to disorder in general might be an error
and that, while loosely connected, specific acts may not reflect
a general state of disorder. He suggested that specific problems
would require specific solutions. This seemed to provide more
support for problem-oriented policing strategies than it did for
the broken windows theory.
In short, the validity of the broken windows theory is not
known. It is safe to conclude that the theory does not explain
everything and that, even if the theory is valid, companion
theories are necessary to fully explain crime. Alternatively, a
more complex model is needed to consider many more cogent
factors. Almost every study of the topic has, however, validated
the link between disorder and fear. There is also strong support
for the belief that fear increases a person’s desire to abandon

4. disorderly communities and move to environments that are more
hospitable. This option is available to the middle class, who can
afford to move, but not to the poor, who have fewer choices. If
the middle class moves out and the poor stay, the
neighbourhood will inevitably become economically
disadvantaged. This suggests that the next wave of theorization
about neighbourhood dynamics and crime may take an economic
bent.
Inspiration
Posted: November 30, 2012 in Article Reactions, Article
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Inspiration can come from the strangest of places. I’ve been
struggling with a topic to write a paper on. The paper had very
broad instructions: a paper related to a theory of justice.
Sometimes those are the hardest papers to write. Most students
had emailed the professor (if you are ever stumped, do that), I
was too proud and just sat here and procrastinated. And then I
wrote this reading response and I was inspired.
Reading Response: Broken Windows by James Wilson and
George Kelling
On the surface, one may look at the Broken Window theory as a
simple causal relationship: broken window in a house leads to
vandalism and an increase in crime, but it’s just not that simple.
I think the deeper meaning of what a broken window represents
and what it really leads to is important and presents a more
cyclical relationship.
Let’s start with their example: Consider a building with a few
broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency
is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they
may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied,

5. perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a
sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter
accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash
from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.
The reason why broken windows and acts of vandalism are still
prevalent is because communities simply do not seem to care for
it. The window itself actually symbolizes that the community
does not care and will not address the problem. The negligence
of society towards any form of a “broken window” signifies the
lack of concern for the community.
What isn’t shown in a simple diagram is the deeper actions and
emotions that have to play into a simple broken window. For
one, there has to be a feeling of disjointedness in the
community, a sense of anonymity, in order for the window to be
broken. The window itself should become a signal crime to
community; however, when there is no repair, it instead signals
to others that antisocial behavior is acceptable. When the
window is not repaired, a further reinforcement of said behavior
exists and states that such behavior is tolerable and overlooked.
Soon, the behavior becomes a social norm in the community and
more people feel that they can engage in the act. The feeling of
conformity to the social norm (the act of vandalism) is further
enforced when there is such a lack of routine monitoring
(ignoring the increase in vandalism) that the further acts go
ignored.
I think what’s important here is that it’s not a simple causal
model: Instead of just leading to a simple increase in crime, this
act reinforces the previous acts and the increase become
cyclical, reinforcing itself, and adding to further increases in a
lack of community cohesion and a feeling of anonymity within
the community; the community continues to ignore the
individual and the crime. This basically shows the power of
reinforcement—by ignoring the crime, you are reinforcing that
crime is acceptable. At any point in this cycle, a simple increase
in patrol (be it community or police) or even a repair would
show some thought and that the community recognizes the

6. damage.
Edward Abbey once wrote: In my notion of an anarchist
community every citizen – man or woman – would be armed,
trained, capable when necessary of playing the part of
policeman or soldier. A healthy community polices itself; a
healthy society would do the same. Looters, thugs, criminals,
may appear anywhere, anytime, but in nature such types are
mutants, anomalies, a minority; the members of a truly
democratic, anarchistic community would not require outside
assistance in dealing with them. Some might call this vigilante
justice; I call it democratic justice. Better to have all citizens
participate in the suppression and punishment of crime—and
share the moral responsibility—than turn the nasty job over to
some quasi-criminal type (or hero) in a uniform with a tin badge
on his shirt. Yes, we need heroes. We need heroines. But they
should serve only as inspiration and examples, not as leaders.
As shown in the broken window theory and in things like the
murder Kitty Genovese, we are not able to police ourselves.
Some may argue that this is because we are not a healthy
society, but I would argue that it is the fundamental nature of
our society. Though our society has shifted from a communal
and collectivistic society to a more individualistic society, this
need for a sense of community is still important in order to
maintain a lawful and orderly way of living. The way this is
done is through policing.
The backlash against order maintenance policing is unfairly
narrow. Contrary to the popular “crime-control” role that police
take, order maintenance policing has officers maintaining the
social order of society. In fact, the notion that the function of
law (or in this case police) is to maintain social order is a very
common one. Bronislaw Malinowski’s Crime and Custom in a
Savage Society took this approach from an anthropological
standpoint. Further, Eugen Ehrich (1975), while working in the
hinterlands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, laid out the same
basic thesis. “Living law” was the label Ehrlich gave to this
action. Aristotle (1988) stated that “for law is order” and Vago

7. (2009, p. 10) openly stated that “The paramount function of law
is to regulate and constrain the behavior of individuals in their
relationship with one another.”
I liken the signal crime of a broken window to an open wound:
if you recognize that the wound is an issue, you can apply a
Band-Aid; if you ignore it, the wound could fester and infection
could spread. The way I see it? Order maintenance is not the
Band-Aid, it is ointment: The police presence can’t repair the
community, but it can speed along the process; it is up to the
body to eventually fix itself.
The Abbey quote has always been one of my favorite, but I
never thought it would inspire me. I want to argue that though
community policing, though it may not reduce crime, has
intrinsic value because it strengthens the community. Instead of
taking a conventional approach, I want to use this
anarchistic/utopian philosophy to argue the true merit of
community policing is within its community-empowerment
value: You can argue that (a) the police are public servants, (b)
should maintain social order and not focus on crime-control,
and (c) help the community return to a state where it can police
itself. After all, Abbey did argue that anarchy does not imply no
rules, it means no rulers.
Now I just have to start writing and stop procrastinating!
Moral of the story?
1. Inspiration can come from anywhere
2. When you are not able to pick a topic, ask for help (which I
didn’t do)
3. Never procrastinate (which I never do)
Reference: https://crimgal.wordpress.com/category/classes-
2/theories-of-justice/
By John Leo
Introduction

8. Question: Graffiti is a big issue in Los Angeles, litter is i1
major issue in downtown
Philadelphia, and panhandUng is emerging as a dominant issue
in a dozen cities.
Why should this be so? Aren't most of these cities swamped
with far more urgent
social problems?
Likelyanswer: The cities are displaying a significant shift in
public attitudes. This
shift is strongly in the direction of the "broken window" theory
of social decay.
The theory was outlined in a 1982 article in The Atlantic by
political scientist
James Q. Wilson and criminologist George Kelling. It says this:
The key to social
decay is a rising level of disorder that residents fail to challenge
in time. When
broken windows are not fixed, when graffiti and uncollected
garbage become
regular features and winos begin to doze off on stoops and
sidewalks, a powerful
signal goes out that the residents of the area have ceased to care
about conditions.
This leads to a break in morale and a feeling that events are out
of control. Landlords
don't make repairs. Vandalism spreads. The stage is set for
prostitutes,
druggies and criminals to drift in, and the neighborhood goes
under.
Disorder and Decline
The broken-window theory is largely upheld by a
book Disorder and Decline, a study of 40 urban
neighborhoods by Wesly Skogan, professor of
pnlitical science at Northwestern. But mayors and
councilmen and city administrators haven't
needed to wait for academic proof. More and

9. more, they grasp the idea intuitively. That's why
Los Angeles is trying to keep up with the flood of
graffiti, why Philadelphia businessmen spent so
much money to get the litter out of an 80-block
downtown area, and why New York spent tens of
millions of dollars to wipe graffiti from its subway
system and keep it out.
Minor battles. The major lesson of the brokenwindow
theory is that the crucial battles to save a
neighborhood must be fought over apparently
minor social infractions, well below the threshold
of police response. By the time the offenses are
great enough to justify police time and effort, the
struggle is often lost.
101
This is the real reason - not "the new war on the
poor" or "compassion fatigue" - why panhandling
has mushroomed into a sizable political
issue. In many cities, the life of downtown areas
and the remaining stable residential neighborhoods
is dearly at stake. Shoppers are increasingly
afraid of going downtown, for fear of being
-
hassled. Polls in cities such as Nashville and San
Francisco show that large numbers of people are
beginning to feel intimidated and coerced by
panhandlers. Even in cities where almost nobody
walks, such as Miami, the drifters who clean
windshields at red lights have become a serious
issue .... There is the growing gut feeling, often
confused and inarticulated, that things have gone
too far and that the quarter given to a panhandler
is helping to finance the downward spiral of cities.
A study by social scientists at Columbia University
shows that 69 percent of Americans think the
homeless should not be allowed to panhandle.

10. This appears to be broken-window sentiment: The
study also shows that most people are willing to
pay more taxes to solve the problem.
The New York City Transit Authority banned
beggars from the subways, lost the right to do so in
district court, and then won back the right on
appeal. This was an important victory. It was not
a triumph of the well-to-do over the poor. A large
percentage of riders are blue-collar or poor themselves.
It was not a victory for compassion fatigue
- polls showed that sympathy for the plight of
beggars and the homeless actually increased
among the ridership after the court decision.
Felonies decreased 15 percent. ...
The Transit Authority acted on the proposition that
the majority is right in claiming that public spaces
must be kept open for orderly public use, free of
hassles or coercion. Ten years ago, the suit probably
could not have been filed in New York. It
would have been out of bounds politically as an
attack on social victims or individual freedoms.
But time marches on. I think we are coming to the
end of a 25-year experiment to see whether we
can tolerate the consequences of social policies
based entirely on individual rights and compassion.
In my opinion, the answer is in: We can't.
The disaster of deinstitutionalization is part of this.
So is the gradual surrender of parks, bus depots,
train stations and other public spaces. There is
now a drive to reclaim those spaces and to find a
better balance between the rights of the community
and the rights of the individual. No one
knows how this will develop, but the impatience
with the old pol icies is all around us and it is
starting to flow into the political mainstream.
THE BROKEN-WINDOW THEORY OF URBAN DECAY

11. By John Leo
Adapted from "The Broker.-Window Theory of Urban Decay"
Published in This World, March 15, 1992; first published in
U.s. News and World Report, 1992.
Broken panes bring bad luck:
the broken window theory
In the eighties and nineties the New York City police were
confronted with increasing rates of theft, violent crime and drug
sales in the city. In order to combat this, the police launched the
‘Quality of life’ campaign. The idea behind this was that a
littered environment was a feeding ground for criminality. An
environment with social disorder (such as loitering youths,
public drunkenness and prostitution) and physical disorder
(such as graffiti, abandoned buildings and trash in the street)
increased the chance of both petty and serious crime. For this
reason graffiti and traces of vandalism were removed and,
mindful of the message of the previous chapter, the litter in the
streets was cleaned up. To the delight of the police, crime
figures in the city dropped significantly.
The explanation was termed the ‘broken window theory’. James
Wilson and George Kwelling propose that when a window in a
building is broken and goes unrepaired, the chance of another
window breaking increases. The more broken windows, the
greater the chance of more windows being smashed to
smithereens. A building with broken windows subsequently
attracts other forms of criminality, such as breaking in,
squatting and stripping the building. This in turn will cause
criminality around the building to increase; it attracts criminals,
while law-abiding citizens avoid the area. According to the
broken window theory, people see physical and social disorder
as a sign that everything is permissible and that authority is
absent. Such an environment puts ideas into people’s heads, and
lowers the threshold to overstepping their boundaries. The
underlying idea is that a single transgression encourages people
to commit further transgressions or expands to become one big

12. transgression, and that one transgressor grows into many.
Empirical evidence for this theory was supplied years later by
Kees Keizer and colleagues. In one experiment the main
entrance to a parking lot was temporarily closed by the
researchers. However, they had left a gap of 50 centimeters. On
the fence the researchers had hung up a sign with the text ‘No
entry, go around to the other entrance’. The side entrance was
200 meters further on. What would people do when they wanted
to get to their cars, walk around, or slip through the opening?
The researchers were curious in particular as to whether the
behavior of the drivers would depend on the environment. For
that reason they had hung up another board on the fence with
the text, ‘No locking bicycles to the fence’. In one scenario
there were four bicycles one meter from the fence. In the other
there were four bicycles locked directly to the fence. In the
environment with the freestanding bicycles, 27 percent of the
people slipped through the fence; with the bicycles locked to
the fence the figure was 82 percent. The researchers had
expected this effect, but were surprised by the big difference.
In another experiment, Keizer and colleagues examined whether
the negative effect of such an environment could spur people on
to more serious misdemeanors. This time the researchers stuffed
an addressed envelope half way into a red letterbox. A five-euro
bill was clearly visible through the window of the envelope.
Would passers-by take the letter out and pocket the money? In a
clean environment 13 percent did this. When there was graffiti
around the letterbox, the figure doubled to 27 percent.
The explanation which Keizer and colleagues gave was the
following. They distinguished three goals for influencing
behavior: ‘normative goals’ (behaving as you should), ‘hedonic
goals’ (feeling good), and ‘gain goals’ (improving your material
situation). These three goals do not always weigh equally; their
relative weight is affected by the environment. The normative
goal, however, is a priori the weakest of the three and is under
pressure from the two other goals. Environmental factors, such
as disorder, push normative goals to the background, bringing

13. the other goals to the fore. If someone sees that others give the
normative goal less priority, that reduces their own attention for
the goal, and laziness and greed gain the upper hand. If you
notice that others violate the rules (for instance by locking their
bicycles to the fence when this is explicitly prohibited), then
you yourself will attach less importance to the normative goal
of behaving properly, increasing the chance that you will slip
through the fence. If you see an envelope containing five euros
hanging out of a letterbox, then the disordered environment
increases the weight you give to your own gain goal, so you are
more likely to take the envelope. Violation of norms spreads
because the normative goal (following the rules) is weakened,
opening up more space for self-interest.
The strength of this theory is that it shows that people not only
imitate the behavior of others (as shown in the previous chapter
in Cialdini’s research), but that when people observe others
violating the norms, this also leads them to violate other norms.
The normative goal
53
15. Broken panes bring bad luck: the broken window theory
is weakened in its entirety. This means that in order to prevent
an escalation of violations, minor misdemeanors and their
visible effects should be dealt with quickly, and that if you want
to improve the ethics and integrity of an organization, this must
be done in an integrated and coherent way. If an organization
wishes to combat internal fraud, then it must also prevent
antisocial behavior such as intimidation, aggression, and
hostility. If an organization wishes to deal carefully and
responsibly with clients, then it must deal carefully with other
stakeholders. Unethical behavior is very difficult to isolate: an
organization cannot be ethical in one relationship or situation,
and unethical in another. Unethical behavior, as shown in the
above experiments, is a wildfire that spreads easily.
Keizer’s theory also helps to explain why, if unethical behavior
has escalated and spread widely, this cannot be reversed simply
by cleaning up afterwards. The culture is then already so badly

14. infected that people no longer attach any significance to the
normative goal. Much energy must then be put into establishing
and communicating the importance of this. Companies which
have slipped off the rails and been discredited can therefore
make a good start towards recovery by re-evaluating their
business mission from a normative perspective, reformulating
business goals, rewriting the code of conduct, making intensive
efforts to communicate this, and providing extensive training to
employees. This is the only way to win back territory for the
normative goal, and it will improve behavior on countless fronts
in its wake.
If you want to prevent an organization being derailed and a
great deal of energy being required to get things back on track,
then the task is to repair “broken windows” in the organization
as quickly as possible.
54
15. Broken panes bring bad luck: the broken window theory
The CDA had dual purposes of creating measures to deal with
anti-social behaviour, and
changing the youth justice system. In placing these two issues
within the same framework
ASB and youth crime were situated within the same discourse.
The Act is heavily weighted
towards measures which target children and young people, and
as a result some have
suggested that the title is misleading. Piper (1999) writing soon
after the introduction of
the Act suggests that:
“…an Act entitled ‘Crime and Disorder’ which concentrates to
the extent
this Act does on children and young persons [sic] is clearly
endorsing
those political and social ideas which emphasise the ‘danger’ of
young
people’s behaviour – the perceived threat from children ‘out of
control’

15. and the potential threat to society if children are not guided into
responsible and law-abiding adulthood.” (Piper, 1999: 399)
A sentiment reiterated by Muncie:
“...many of [the CDA’s] provisions are explicitly directed not
only at
young offenders, but at young people in general.” (Muncie,
1999: 147)
Beginning with the CDA, the ASB Agenda has sought to control
the activities of young
people in general, not only those who have acted anti-socially
(if that can ever be clearly
defined). One of the central aims of the ASB agenda is “keeping
young people off the
streets” (DCSF Press Release, 6th January 2010). This is
fulfilled in one of two ways: either
through encouraging young people to join youth clubs and other
extra-curricular activities
(discussed in chapter 6.4.1), or through enforcement measures
such as child curfews or
dispersal powers. This reinforces the perception that the
presence of young people on the
[54]
streets is somehow dangerous; both for members of the
community who may be the target
of youth ASB as well as for the young people themselves who
may become criminal as a
result of their ASB. Youths hanging around on the streets “have
become the universal
symbol of disorder and, increasingly, menace” (Burney, 2002:
73). This problematisation of
youth on the streets is further explored in chapter 6.4. Much of
the discourse justifying
ASB measures targeted at young people and children is based on
the premise that ASB
leads to crime (usually based on ‘broken window’ theory, see:
Wilson and Kelling, 1982)

16. and that children and young people who undertake ASB even at
a low level are at risk of
becoming criminals (Home Office, 1997b, 1998). Thus, ASB
enforcement measures are restructured
as positive interventions to ‘nip it in the bud’ (Home Office,
1997b), and
members of the public are also encouraged to view all levels of
ASB as unacceptable and
report it to the authorities.
The political rhetoric and legislation of the ASB Agenda has
created a recognisable folk devil
in the anti-social youth. Pre-existing social types such as ‘yob’,
‘hooligan’ and ‘thug’ have
been absorbed into ASB discourse at the same time as newer
concepts of the ‘chav’
(discussed further in chapter 4.6.4) and ‘hoodie’. In particular
the ‘hoodie’, a young person
who wears hooded jumpers or jackets with the hood over their
heads seemingly for the
purpose of acting in a menacing way, has become shorthand for
anti-social young people.
Events widely reported in the media such as the banning of
‘hoodies’ from shopping
centres: “Torquay hoodie ban for Asbo teenagers” (The
Independent, 15th October 2008)
and “'Mall bans shoppers' hooded tops” (BBC News, 11th May
2005) serve to create an
association between the action (wearing a hoodie) and a whole
class of individuals
(teenagers). Attempts to challenge these stereotypes are further
hindered when politicians
join the debate to confirm the stereotypes: “Blair backs ban on
hooded sweatshirts” (The
Times, 12th May 2005). Thus the picture of the anti-social
youth is confirmed and through
this process the folk devil is created and maintained.

17. Community Policing NuggetBroken Windows and Community
Policing
The notion of broken windows has provided important insights
and innovation to the field of policing. At times, however, these
ideas have been misunderstood, misapplied, and often viewed
outside the context of community policing. Broken windows is
based on the notion that signs of incivility, like broken
windows, signify that nobody cares, which leads to greater fear
of crime and a reduction of community efficacy, which in turn
can lead to more serious crimes and greater signs of incivility,
repeating the cycle into a potential spiral of decay. For police,
the insight of broken windows is that they are called on to
address minor quality-of-life offenses and incidents of social
disorder to prevent more serious crime, and that they must take
specific steps to increase the capacity of communities to exert
informal social control. Just as many have inaccurately reduced
community policing to community relations, others have
incorrectly reduced broken windows to merely zero tolerance or
order enforcement policies, with little regard for community
concerns or outcomes. In fact, broken windows advocates for
the careful implementation of these specific police tactics so
that individual rights and community interests are respected. In
addition, broken windows stresses the importance of including
communities in the change process, with the primary goal being
the development of informal social control mechanisms within
the communities in question and not merely increased
enforcement of minor offenses.
Later articulations of broken windows place it squarely within
the context of community policing and attempt to address some
of the legal and moral implication of its adoption. As Sousa and
Kelling (2006:90) state, “we believe that order maintenance
should represent a policy option in support of police and
community efforts to be implemented as problem-analysis and
problem-solving dictates.” An application of a one- size-fits-all
order maintenance program is unlikely to have universally
positive effects on all of the various crimes and serious

18. problems confronted by police departments and is not advocated
for by broken-windows theory. Rather, from the perspective of
community policing, broken windows represents an important
potential response to crime and disorder problems that may or
may not be dictated through problem-solving processes and
broken-windows-style interventions should be conducted in
partnership with community stakeholders.
Broken windows is more narrow in scope than the overarching
community policing philosophy and fits well within the
community policing context. For example, unlike the
community policing philosophy, broken windows does not
attempt to identify specific organizational changes in law
enforcement agencies that are necessary to institutionalize these
types of police interventions. Situating broken windows within
the broader community policing philosophy can help to advance
the organizational changes necessary to make broken windows
interventions (when they are called for through careful analysis)
successful and sustainable. For example, broken windows can
benefit from community policing’s focus on hiring different
kinds of officers (who pay attention to disorder and have skills
in community capacity building), building stronger analytical
functions to support proper analysis, and making specific efforts
to engage communities and increase trust to facilitate order-
maintenance interventions.
When broken windows is correctly understood within a broader
community policing philosophy, improper implementation of its
central tenets through such things as ignoring community
concerns, applying a zero tolerance one-size-fits-all approach to
minor offenses, and conducting cursory or no analysis of
problems, are less likely to occur. Appreciating the true scope
of broken windows policing concepts within the context of
community policing will enable these innovations to flourish
and be most effective.
Sousa, W.H. & Kelling, G.L. (2006). Of “broken windows,”
criminology, and criminal justice. In D. Weisburd & A. A.
Braga (Eds.), Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives

19. (pp.77-97). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press./p>
· -Matthew C. Scheider, Ph.D.
Assistant Director,
The COPS Office
Breaking Down the Walls:
Examining Broken Windows Theory and Policing in Relation to
Graffiti Writing in Canterbury
Michael Mills
MA Methods of Social Research Dissertation 2012
School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
University of Kent
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. Johnny Ilan for his
guidance, support and supervision throughout this project.

20. Without his help this thesis would have read quite differently,
and been much the worse for it.
My father’s constant encouragement in this undertaking, and
throughout the duration of my Master’s course, has as ever been
a great support. In addition, his dutiful and diligent proof-
reading of much of this thesis has surely spared me several
embarrassing cases of indecipherable sentences. Though
perhaps some such sentences remain, the blame for this can only
be attributed to me alone. Thanks, Dad.
Abstract
Despite being frequently and fervently promoted by local
authorities in the city of Canterbury, the value of using Broken
Windows logic to describe the impact of graffiti on criminality
in its immediate area is not self-evident. First articulated in J.Q.
Wilson and George Kelling’s seminal Broken Windows thesis,
the theory itself asserts ‘that serious street crime flourishes in
areas in which disorderly behaviour goes unchecked’ (1982:
36). This thesis sought to test whether this related accurately to

21. Canterbury’s street settings, specifically by noting whether
crime rates were higher in locations that graffiti writing was
most prevalent. It also sought, through qualitative descriptive
and discussions, to observe first-hand whether graffiti has in
some part been responsible for spikes in criminality in areas of
the city. The findings of this mixed-methods study offered little
empirical support for this theory where no evidence, be it
qualitative or statistical, pointed towards graffiti acting as a
catalyst for the kind of sequential decline described by Wilson
and Kelling. ‘Broken Windows policing’ was similarly revealed
by this analysis to have little correspondence with street level
conditions in the city: where graffiti appeared to have little
effect in causing crime, such a programme, in which a reduction
in graffiti (and visible disorder more generally) is targeted as a
means of reducing further criminality, is suggested here to have
little effect in reducing wider crime rates. Thus, this thesis
sought to introduce a cultural criminological reasoning to better
explain what was found throughout the city; one that most,
importantly, provides a nuanced appreciation of the multiple
meanings graffiti can carry within the contemporary cultural
script. Through this theoretical lens, which recognises the
importance of context awareness (both cultural and geographic)
when the theorising the relationship between graffiti and its
immediate environment, it was judged that viable alternatives
exist that ought to usurp Broken Windows logic as the default
response the appearance of writing.

22. Contents
Chapter I
Introduction : Canterbury’s Broken Windows and Graffiti
‘Scourge’ 5
Chapter II
Literature Review 10
Chapter III
Methodology20
Chapter IV
City Wide Correlations: Quantitative Analysis 33
Chapter V
Breaking Down the Walls: the Street-Level Gaze
41
Chapter VI:
Conclusions
57
Bibliography
62
Chapter I
Introduction: Canterbury’s Broken Windows and Graffiti
‘Scourge’
Graffiti is regarded a problem in the city of Canterbury. This
small, largely wealthy and relatively serene Cathedral city in
the south-east of England, with a population of around 70,000
people and a local economy that largely runs on tourism, its
night-life and its student populace, seemingly considers itself to
be under threat from forms of street art that inhabit the city’s

23. walls (This is Kent, 22/1/2009). Though not intrusive, the sight
of graffiti is still part of the everyday experience for those who
walk the city, where most appears either in small clusters or
isolated tags and is noticed only by those who keep their eyes
open for it. Though its graffiti scene therefore bears little
resemblance to the street art meccas of New York, London,
Bristol, Berlin or Melbourne, the police and local council,
however, believe graffiti to be a serious local issue. In an effort
to alleviate the apparently ‘disgraceful state of this graffiti on
the walls of our city’ (Adam Parsons quoted in The Kentish
Gazette, 2/6/2011: 14), authorities have sought to remove
graffiti where possible and aggressively police and punish
writers in order to deter those responsible for this local concern.
This has included the swift removal of graffiti in the city with a
Graffiti Busters service (Canterbury City Council, 2012), a free
hotline for reporting writing, raids on suspected writers’ homes
(This is Kent, 8/4/2011), and the arrest and prosecution of
writers at every given opportunity (Claridge, A. and Alston, K.,
18/3/2010, This is Kent, 12/2/2010, 19/1/2012). This attempt to
send out a ‘firm message that we take this antisocial behaviour
seriously’ (This is Kent, 8/4/2011) has also seen a verbal
assault launched against graffiti whereby the acts of writers are
described as harbingers of social decline and urban decay.
Consider this statement on the city council’s website:
‘Graffiti undermines pride in the local community. Graffiti is
often the first element in a spiral of decline and creates a
negative impression of an area. It also contributes to the fear of
crime’ (Canterbury City Council, 2012: 1).
Such a disparaging attitude to graffiti is also shared by many
senior members of local communities, some of whom have
started their own anti-graffiti campaigns (see Napler, 19/5/2011
and The Kentish Gazette, 2/6/2011: 14), suggesting that the
‘scourge of graffiti’ (Herbert Pragnall quoted in The Kentish
Gazette, 25/3/2010: 9) is already damaging the local area:
‘This graffiti is detrimental…because it sends out the signal
that no one cares, and that it's okay to throw some more rubbish

24. down…It's not only rubbish which is increasing in the area but
dog fouling as well, because it makes the area look rundown’
(This is Kent, 11/3/2011).
Such descriptions of graffiti’s effect on its immediate
surroundings clearly echo the logic found in Broken Windows
theory, originally articulated in Kelling and Wilson’s (1982)
seminal article in Atlantic Monthly. Famously, or perhaps
‘infamously’ (Wasterfors, 2009: 92)), suggesting that crime is
likely to ‘occur anywhere once communal barriers—the sense of
mutual regard and the obligations of civility—are lowered by
actions that seem to signal that "no one cares"’ (Wilson and
Kelling, 1982: 33), Broken Windows rationale has seen graffiti
writing characterised as a sign of incivility that will attract
crime to locations in which it is prevalent (see Sloan-Hewitt and
Kelling, 1990). According to Wilson and Kelling, graffiti
effects its environment by making it appear ‘uncontrolled and
uncontrollable, and that anyone can invade it to do whatever
damage and mischief the mind suggests’ (1982: 34). Authorities
in Canterbury appear to take such ideas seriously and have
adopted elements of so-called ‘Broken Windows policing’
(Hinkle and Weisburd, 2008) in their local war on writing; an
approach to crime control born from the logic articulated
throughout this thesis. Such a policing programme, based on the
central tenets of Kelling and Wilson’s hypothesis, has generally
involved an increase in manpower and resources oriented
towards policing minor misdemeanours, under the guise that
this will herald a reduction in disorder and more serious crime
(McLaughlin, 2008): ‘where a window is likely to be broken at
any time, it must quickly be fixed if all are not to be shattered’
(Wilson and Kelling, 1982: 37). In Canterbury this has equated
to local authorities intervening at the ‘first element in a spiral
of decline’ (Canterbury City Council, 2012: 1) represented by
graffiti and other signs of low-level disorder in the city. This
resulted in a multi-agency approach between the local council
and police force, with even traffic wardens being invested with
the power to issue on the spot fines for writers or those who

25. litter in the city (Warren, 23/8/12).
After its perceived successes in New York City and across
America (Harcourt and Ludwig, 2006), Broken Windows theory
and policing appear to have garnered the approval of many
police practitioners the world over (Wacquant, 2003). However,
the premises of Kelling and Wilson’s argument continues to
inspire debate amongst criminologists, many of which remain
unresolved. Many scholars remain either sceptical towards or
vehemently critical of the theory’s assertions, with its claims
that acts of so-called ‘disorder’ both increase fear of crime and
criminality in their local context regularly being called into
question. Moreover, the effectiveness of Broken Windows
policing remains part of on-going debates, where it has been
suggested that stories of the policy’s success have been vastly
overstated (Harcourt, 1998, Harcourt and Ludwig, 2006).
Among many cultural criminologists there remains little doubt
that those in political power have utilised Broken Windows as a
‘convenient foundation’ (Ferrell, 2005: 148) for ‘assign[ing] the
blame for street crime not to poverty and marginalisation, but to
the poor and marginalised’ (Ferrell cited in Snyder, 2009: 6),
and implicitly linking disorderly behaviours to an ‘underclass’
way of life’ (Squires, 2008: 15), and in doing so propping up
their own popularity (Snyder, 2009: 24). Indeed, this has been
suggested to generally be the case with authorities’ approach to
graffiti writers, and perhaps more so than to any other deviant
group: Austin’s (2001) and Ferrell’s (1996) analysis across New
York and Denver respectively highlight the mobilisation of
Broken Windows against writers at a time when each city’s
mayor stood to acquire political capital by claiming writers to
be the source of several social problems. In light of such
scepticism, this popular policing approach has been suggested
to be based on ‘folk wisdom’ (Matthews, 1992: 20) and ‘the
political and economic goals of those who orchestrate’ such
approaches (Snyder, 2006: 95): representing ‘a taken for
granted assumption’ amongst policy practitioners (Crawford
cited in Beckett and Godoy, 2010: 279), rather than a police

26. derived from any robust reasoning or evidence.
The Research
It is therefore important to determine whether Broken
Windows does accurately describe graffiti’s impact on its urban
surroundings. The combination of the policy relevance of these
discussions and the relatively nebulous body of existing
evidence on this topic, makes these issues extremely pertinent
and relevant to intertwining discussions of theory and policing
practice in contemporary criminology. This research, then,
seeks to test whether Broken Windows theory provides the best
theoretical framework for understanding the relationship
between graffiti and wider crime in Canterbury. In doing so, it
will also reflect on whether the Broken Windows policing
model employed across the city offers the most effective way of
reducing the city’s crime rates. Pertaining to issues of graffiti
writing, this study is centred on an attempt to bring some clarity
to the aforementioned debates by answering two questions:
· To what extent does Broken Windows theory provide an
accurate understanding of graffiti writing’s effect on its
immediate environment in Canterbury?
· To what extent is a focus on graffiti as part of Broken
Windows policing in Canterbury likely to be effective in
reducing crime as a whole?
It is hoped that this thesis will make both a theoretical and
methodological contribution to the body of literature
surrounding Broken Windows theory. As well as shedding light
on the aforementioned discussions, this mixed-methods study
will utilise a mixed methods approach to the testing of Wilson
and Kelling’s hypothesis by combining the quantitative analysis
found in most of the literature with a more contextualised,
street-based approach (similar to that previously used by
Taylor, 1999, 2001). Alongside the use of crime maps and
photography of graffiti on the streets of the city to unearth
correlations between graffiti and crime across the city, a series

27. of smaller case studies will be analysed in order to develop a
richer sense of context around graffiti writing: whether (and
why) graffiti is largely visible or hidden, as well as the likely
consequences for this in terms of its impact on its immediate
environment. The combination of these approaches is intended
to provide a broad picture of graffiti and crime’s distribution
throughout the entire city, whilst also getting to the root of the
specific nature of the relationship between graffiti and crime
through these more detailed case studies.
As will be revealed in the upcoming chapters, the findings
of this research project give reason to be highly critical of
Broken Windows theory; as they demonstrate the theory’s
central premises to have little correspondence with the apparent
relationship between graffiti and crime throughout the city.
Both in the quantitative analysis, from which no meaningful
correlation between graffiti and other forms of crime is found,
and the analysis of case studies throughout the city, little
evidence was found to suggest that the ‘developmental
sequence’ towards urban decay described by Kelling and
Wilson, in which ‘disorder and crime are… inextricably linked’
(both quotes 1982: 32), had begun or was likely to begin.
Deriving from these findings it has also been suggested that
there is little empirical foundation for Broken Windows
policing in the city, with it being argued that attempts to reduce
crime through controlling graffiti are therefore likely to be
ineffectual. Alternatively, as the thesis progresses, a variety of
cultural criminological arguments, which sheds light on
graffiti’s location within mainstream culture, the unintended
effects of Broken Windows policing on practices of writing and
the pluralistic uses of particular urban spaces, emerge as a much
more serviceable theoretical framework for explaining these
findings. This prompts a reconfiguration of the way we
understand graffiti’s impact on its immediate environment and
the effectiveness of attempts to effectively police it through a
Broken Windows model, emphasising the need for us to move
beyond Wilson and Kelling’s ideas in order to understand, and

28. develop policies towards, graffiti writing and policing in the
city of Canterbury.
Chapter II:
Literature Review
Before delving into the findings of this research project, it is
important to outline what is currently known about Broken
Windows theory and policing, including: the arguments that put
forward this theory; tests of its accuracy and the effectiveness
of its associated policing practices and, then; some of its main
critiques in criminological literature. This literature review will
detail each of these bodies of work and will, throughout the
chapter, make clear how they relate to existing scholarly
knowledge on graffiti writing’s impact on its immediate
environment. It will also flag the contributions this study aims
to make to existing knowledge on Broken Windows theory and
graffiti writing. As this literature review will show, there is no
shortage on works commenting on, critiquing or testing the
Broken Windows thesis. What we must consider, however, is
what these works collectively tell us and whether there remain
unanswered questions and gaps in knowledge in this area of
study that this research can viably address.
The “Broken Windows” Thesis
Broken Windows theory’s brand of ‘environmental criminology’
(see Bottom and Wiles, 2002), as originally found in Wilson and
Kelling’s (1982) seminal article (‘arguably one of the most
influential and widely cited articles in North American
criminology’ (McLaughlin, 2008: 27)), constructs a model of

29. crime causation that identifies low-level disorder as a cause of
more serious offences. Providing what has been described as ‘an
alluring and elegant simplicity’ (Willis, 2002: 220) in their
portrayal of an area’s sequential descent into unmanageable
chaos, Wilson and Kelling’s thesis offers a description of how
‘serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly
behaviour goes unchecked’ (1982: 36). Characterising forms of
incivility as ‘symbolic invitations to more serious forms of
criminality’, this perspective itself suggests that initial
disruptions of social order may pave the way to ‘a downward
spiral of criminal disorder’ (both quotes Ferrell, 2005: 148) that
causes community members to withdraw from order
maintenance, as fear of crime increases, and leave the area
‘vulnerable to criminal invasion’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982:
32). Claiming that such visible signs of disorder ‘create a
negative impression of an unmanaged and uncared for
environment’ (Department for Transport, 2010: 3), it is argued
that they therefore attract offenders from outside the area who
sense that it has become a vulnerable and less risky site for
crime. Wilson and Kelling continue:
‘it is more likely here, rather than in places where people are
confident they can regulate public behaviour by informal
controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and
cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys
who do it as a lark, and that prostitute’s customers will be
robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently.
That muggings will occur’ (Kelling and Wilson, 1982: 33).
Hinkle and Weisburd’s (2008) representation of the sequential
decline described in Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows
thesis.

30. Amongst the acts of so-called ‘disorder’ that have been
characterised as catalysts for such sequential decay by Broken
Windows scholars and various public officials, graffiti appears
to have assumed a leading role. Examples of this in action have
ranged from the spectacular association of graffiti with the most
heinous of criminal acts, ‘obviously, murder and graffiti are two
vastly different crimes… But they are part of the same
continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to
tolerate the other’ (Giuliani, 1998: 1), to less a hyperbolic
belief that ‘graffiti not only damages property but actually
makes public space more dangerous by turning neutral space
into crime space’ (Snyder, 2009: 48). Regularly referred to as a
harbinger of bad news for urban locales, as a crime that ‘can
ruin lives and create an environment where more serious crime
can take hold’ (HM Government, 2010: 2, see also Sloan-Hewitt
and Kelling, 1990), graffiti is often characterised as the
quintessential threat to social order in the eyes of those who
subscribe to the Broken Windows account of social decline in
urban space. As one Swedish report argues:
‘Illegal graffiti is the visual impression of an uncaring and
indifferent society, where small crimes can lead to bigger
crimes. Without exception, failure to identify the whole
problem accurately and take a proactive approach in the early
stages encourages illegal graffiti to continue to escalate until
resources or the cost of effective control is beyond the means of
any administrations’ (quoted in Department for Transport, 2010:
5).
The latter stages of the above quote allude to the strategies that
have been employed by policing practitioners in an effort to
stave off the processes described in Wilson and Kelling’s
influential article. So-called ‘Broken Windows policing’
(Hinkle and Weisburd, 2008), also referred to elsewhere as both
‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘quality of life’ policing (McLaughlin,
2008a), extends from the theory’s logic by embracing ‘the order

31. maintenance function of the police’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982:
35) and aggressively enforcing minor misdemeanour laws in an
effort to bring about a reduction in initial symptoms of disorder
and, thus, prevent a downward spiral of urban decline (Jang et
al, 2008). Simultaneously, the development of new technology
to aid the police, including developments such as COMPSTAT
and the use of digital technology for surveillance as well as
increased manpower, has generally been central to this approach
(McLaughlin, 2008a, Snyder, 2009). First applied in William
Bratton’s attempt to ‘reclaim the [New York City] subway
system’ (Bratton quoted in McLaughlin, 2008: 59) from
criminality, Broken Windows policing became ‘an integral part
of [the] law enforcement strategy’ (Giuliani, 1998: 1)
throughout the whole city in the 1990s once Randolph Giuliani
was elected Mayor and Bratton appointed police commissioner.
At present, the New York Broken Windows model has since
become the default method of policing across America more
generally, also being used Chicago and Los Angeles (Harcourt
and Ludwig, 2006), and, after perceived success of this
approach in reducing crime rates throughout the 1990s, the
dominant framework for reducing and preventing crime in urban
space across Europe and many places elsewhere (Wacquant,
2003)[footnoteRef:1]. Moreover, this has given the theoretical
ideas that underpin this approach legitimacy in the eyes of many
policing practitioners and public officials, with the original
articulation of Broken Windows theory now standing as one of
the most cited articles in policing literature (Manning, 2001).
[1: That the scholarship of J.Q. Wilson should have a
significant policy impact is of no surprise. Having served on
White House task Force on Crime in 1966 and the US
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985-1991),
‘Wilson’s scholarship stood in stark contrast’ (Delis, 2010: 192)
critical criminologies that dominated the disciplines throughout
the 1960s and 70s. An opposition that Wilson himself was well
aware of (see Wilson, 1975).]

32. Testing the Broken Windows Thesis
Whilst Broken Windows ideas have received acclaim from
those working in policy circles (for example Giuliani, 1998,
Home Office, 2010), debates have rumbled on regarding the
accuracy of the theory’s account of crime causation in urban
spaces among criminologists and remain largely unresolved.
Indeed, in scholarly circles the theory has received a mixed
reaction and has been the subject of longstanding processes of
evaluation, often based around various forms of statistical
analysis, in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of Wilson and
Kelling’s claims. Such tests of Broken Windows theory have,
thus far, taken on one of two forms: either looking for
correlations after measuring neighbourhood disorder and crime,
or measuring of the impact of misdemeanour policing on crime
rates (Harcourt and Ludwig, 2006). What follows is a brief
account of this literature; the key studies and themes that have
emerged in the past 30 years from the testing of Wilson and
Kelling’s original claims. Moreover, it will summarise what
they ultimately tell us about the accuracy of the Broken
Windows thesis.
Alongside a body of literature that lends support to the claim
that signs of disorder impact upon residents’ fear of crime and
their involvement in the local community (see Pitner et al
(2012), Chappell et al (2011)), there are a number of studies
that concur with Wilson and Kelling’s claims regarding disorder
and more serious crime by and showing Broken Windows
policing to have a desirable impact on crime rates. For instance,
we may look to Sloan-Hewitt and Kelling’s (1990) claims of
success on the policing of the New York underground, as well
as Golub et al’s (2003) interviewing of arrestees in New York
found that almost half had reported stopping or cutting back on
disorderly behaviour because of Broken Windows policing
(though obviously not enough to avoid being arrested!). Kelling
and Sousa’s (2001) attempt to quantify the impact of Broken
Windows policing led them to look at the entire city’s crime
rates and, by estimating that for every 28 misdemeanour arrests

33. there was one violent crime prevented, claimed quality of life
policing to have prevented 60,000 violent crimes between 1989
and 1998. These studies, and also other works (such as Zimring,
2007, and Corman and Mocan, 2005), have attributed a large
share of the New York crime drop in the 1990s to this approach
of policing. Outside of New York, Wesley Skogan’s (1990)
widely-cited analysis across 6 American cities found similar a
chain of fear of crime being linked to disorder, and disorder
being a good predictor of robbery victimisation. Similarly,
Thomas et al’s (2011) analysis of arson in Michigan found ‘that
proxies of social disorder can be used to identify areas of high
arson risk, consistent with the Broken Window theory’ (2011:
271). Such studies, however, have often been criticised for the
quality and the nature of their analysis. Re-examining Skogan’s
data set, for example, Brian Harcourt (1998) found that the
conclusions originally offered by the author were skewed by the
influence of a few extreme cases and locations, finding instead
that there was an insignificant relationship between disorder
and serious crime in the vast majority of locations. In addition,
Harcourt and Ludwig’s (2006) analysis prompts caution towards
Kelling and Sousa’s (2001) findings by noting that their
analysis had been skewed by a failing to control for crime rates
prior to 1990[footnoteRef:2]. As these cases show, despite the
evidence pointing towards Wilson and Kelling’s thesis and its
cognate programme of Broken Windows policing being of some
value, there remains reason to remain wary of the these claims
and the evidence used to support them. [2: Citing mean
reversion, Harcourt and Ludwig note that the biggest drops in
the data set came from areas that experienced the largest rise in
crime in the 1980s. They observe that ‘jurisdictions with the
greatest increases in crime during the 1980s tend to experience
the largest subsequent declines as well’ (2006: 276) regardless
of whether Broken Windows policing was used in these areas or
not, and that the effect of such policing was vastly been over-
estimated by Kelling and Sousa (2001).]

34. In addition, other analyses have looked to a context wider than
New York City to suggest that the impact of Broken Windows
policing may have been overstated by the likes of Kelling and
Sousa, and Corman and Mocan (see Barker, 2010, Blumenstein
and Wallman, 2006). For example, Eck and Maguire (2006) note
that the crime rate fell similarly in San Diego, Seattle and
Dallas throughout the 1990s where Broken Windows policing
was not adopted. Furthermore, they show that the crime rate in
Seattle fell 18% with a 6% decrease in manpower, likewise in
Dallas where a 39% reduction in crime came with a 3% decrease
in policing numbers. Moreover, Yang’s (2007) discovery of a
negative correlation between incidents of violent crime and
disorder in Seattle, and Sampson and Raudenbush’s (1999, see
also 2001, 2004) finding that correlations between disorder and
crime were moderate at best, once more bring the theory’s
claims into question and suggest Broken Windows policing to
be ‘analytically weak strategy to reduce crime’ (Sampson and
Raudenbush cited in Harcourt and Ludwig, 2006: 284) (see also
Cerdia et al, 2009, Karmen, 2000).
Reflecting on this collection of work as a whole, including
those studies that support and cast doubt on the Broken
Windows thesis, it appears that the quantitative studies
conducted thus far tell us relatively little in terms of clarifying
the merits of this theory. Presenting an ambiguous picture,
where various statistics are pitted against one-another without
either perspective ultimately disproving the other, this body of
literature merely gives us reason to be sceptical of some of the
theory’s claims and the hyperbole surrounding claims of success
in New York City (where it is claimed that declining crime rates
were ‘proving the Broken Windows theory’ (William Bratton
quoted in Corman and Mocan, 2005: 239)). It is at this point,
then, that the chapter will progress from the detailing of these
tests of Broken Windows relevance to understanding urban
crime, and towards theoretical and contextually-driven
criticisms of Wilson and Kelling’s thesis based on qualitative
research. As will be revealed below, it is in this body of

35. literature that a great deal more is revealed about the problems
in the Broken Windows thesis.
Critiques of Broken Windows
Before we delve into criticisms of Broken Windows theory that
arise from street-level qualitative research, we can see how
Broken Windows’ separation of ‘disorder’ and ‘crime’ has been
criticised. Arguing that the theory fails to establish meaningful
and robust concepts of ‘crime’ and ‘disorder’ (Gau and Pratt,
2010) by re-defining forms of low-level crime (such as
prostitution, public drinking and vandalism) as ‘disorder’, a
term without any legal implications or inherent suggestion of
law-breaking, Gau and Pratt note that Wilson and Kelling’s
theory, in actuality, fails to make any meaningful statement
about how factors outside of criminal behaviour may encourage
criminality (as suggested by Gau and Pratt, 2010). In this sense
the theory provides an imagined sequence of progression from
‘disorder’ to crime, whereas in reality there was only ever
‘crime’ all along. This therefore means that the aforementioned
studies that have subsequently suggested disorder and crime to
be positively correlated often tell us very little; as such terms
often mean the same thing, thus undermining their usefulness
even further!
In addition, looking back on the body of empirical evidence
preceding their work, Gau and Pratt remark that ‘prior studies
have linked levels of structural and social disadvantage to
disorder and crime in a manner suggesting that disorder may
simply be one component of a larger condition of…
concentrated socio-structural disadvantage’ (2010: 763). That
is, social structure resembles a lingering factor that appears to
explain the emergence of both disorder and crime. As Sampson
and Raudenbush (1999) put it, disorder is of the same aetiology
as crime: ‘rather than conceive of disorder as a direct cause of
crime, we view many elements of disorder as part and parcel of
crime itself’ (quoted in Harcourt and Ludwig 2006: 285). In
light of these critiques, ‘disorder’, as found in Broken Windows

36. theory, is exposed as a red herring: a theoretical disguise for
both ‘the structural characteristics of the neighbourhoods, as
well as neighbourhood cohesion and informal social control –
not levels of disorder – that most affect crime’ (Sampson and
Raudenbush quoted in Department for transport, 2010: 6).
These valuable and telling critiques aside, a variety of street-
level studies have also been shown to undermine Wilson and
Kellings thesis with similar effectiveness. Emerging from
cultural criminological critiques of Wilson and Kelling’s
theory, and supported by the findings of Taylor (1999, 2001),
other scholars have called for a greater appreciation of the
multiple meanings that forms of so-called ‘disorder’ can carry
than Broken Windows theory offers. After all, if ‘disorder’ is
not interpreted as such by those who encounter it, then Wilson
and Kelling’s account of urban decline will surely fail to
materialise. Perhaps the greatest example of a crime that is
often ambiguous in its meaning is indeed graffiti writing, which
‘continues to spread like some mutating double-helix,
confounding art, crime and commodity’ (Ferrell et al, 2008:
151) in the late-modern age and actively demonstrates that acts
of criminality can be simultaneously be disdained by various
individuals, embraced by some and met with indifference by
others. While graffiti may indeed seen as a sign of undesirable
things to come (by some), for niche and edgy shopping districts
graffiti may serve to ‘tell shoppers that this is a cool space’
(Snyder, 2009: 53), and for others a sign of potential urban
regeneration:
‘A proliferation of hip-hop graffiti in place of gang graffiti (a
distinction ignored by Wilson and Kelling) may likewise
suggest a decline in criminal violence – that is, it may lead
some neighbourhood residents to understand that gang crime is
on the decline – and in fact it may harbinger a less violent
social order now negotiated through the very symbols that
Wilson and Kelling so tellingly misrepresent’ (Ferrell et al,
2008: 105).
It becomes apparent, then, that the ‘decontextualisation of

37. disorder’ (Gau and Pratt, 2010: 759) within a Broken Windows
model that ‘constructs a series of abstract, one-dimensional
meanings that it arbitrarily assigns to dislocated images’
(Ferrell et al, 2008: 104) of urban crime is not one that is
capable of grasping the complexities and contradictions in
graffiti’s, and perhaps other examples of so-called disorder’s,
meaning to urban audiences:
‘None [are] self-evident or assured; each is negotiated day-to-
day amidst the swirl of urban populations. Because of this,
accurately understanding public display as a key nexus between
crime and culture requires attentiveness and long-term emersion
in everyday situations – not [Broken Windows’] abstract
political posturing’ (Ferrell, 2005: 149).
Ferrell’s call for a contextualised analysis that can dig deeper
into the subtleties of crime has not only extended to a cultural
criminological appreciation of the meanings applied to graffiti
and other crimes; it also relates to different approaches to
ascertaining what environmental factors encourage particular
criminal behaviours. Departing from the detached position
adopted by ‘the milieu of social researchers who choose not to
look at the world’ Emmanuel David (2007: 251), Ralph Taylor’s
studies of Baltimore (1999, 2001) where a mixture of on-site
assessments, maps, census, crime figures and interviews with
residents and community leaders were used, provide a good
example of such an approach. Finding that while some types of
incivilities were related to serious crimes and many others were
not, Taylor identified a variety of separate problems of crime
without a common underlying cause or remedy. In short, the
idea of disorder underpinning the spread of urban crime has
been suggested by Taylor to be false. Elsewhere, Broken
Windows theory’s explanation of criminal behaviour itself,
where criminals are presented as rational actors in the process
of risk-avoidance whilst committing crime (therefore leading
them to low risk ‘disorderly’ areas), has similarly been shown
to be equally troublesome. The work of Peter St. Jean is useful
here for demonstrating how Broken Windows theory fails to

38. account for the driving forces behind the choice of location for
criminal acts. Pockets of Crime (St. Jean, 2007) shows how
decisions regarding where to commit crime are often based on
characteristics of the area that bear little relevance to disorder;
where the area’s impact on the deniability of the crime, footfall,
demand for drugs, or ready distractions are found to be more
integral to understanding where crime takes place than the
prevalence of disorder in an area. Thus while the perception of
a low-risk environment created by signs of disorder may attract
some crime, St. Jean’s street-based analysis demonstrates that
some strategic decisions made by criminals actually lead them
away from disorderly areas. Ethnographers of graffiti writing
subcultures have identified similar dynamics in the behaviour of
writers to those explained by St. Jean, with locations for writing
regularly being shown to be influenced less by perceived
disorder and more so by an intended target audience. Snyder’s
(2009) analysis of New York’s graffiti scene provides a nice
example of this and suggests that writers will often target more
affluent areas (such Manhattan) or rail-side locations in order to
be more widely seen by the people of their city and by other
writers. Thus, it appears that it is not only Wilson and Kelling’s
understanding of how these acts are seen by city dwellers and
the meanings that they carry: the same criticism applies to their
understanding of criminal acts themselves. Moreover, it seems
then that the kind of criticisms levelled at Broken Windows
theory by cultural criminologists (and also Ralph Taylor and
Peter St. Jean), by providing examples of how and why the
theory is limited in particular regards, tell us significantly more
about the accuracy of Wilson and Kelling’s thesis than the
aforementioned body of quantitative analysis. What is required
then, in order to move knowledge forward in this area, is
something that lies closer to a cultural criminological analysis
of urban space and crime: one that adopts an interpretive
epistemology that allows the scholar to understand the multiple
meanings that signs of criminal acts can carry, and is attentive
to the context of the criminal acts and the visible evidence it

39. leaves behind.
How This Study Builds on the Literature
It seems then that work in the vein of Snyder, Taylor, St. Jean
and also Mitchell Duneier (2000) provides the best means of
addressing gaps in knowledge surrounding Broken Windows
theory and policing; where the waters remain muddy regarding
each’s respective accuracy and effectiveness. As has been
outlined throughout this literature review, the current body of
knowledge on the accuracy of Broken Windows theory remains
relatively unclear: the existing battles between various
statistics, data-sets and formulae has failed to give a clear idea
of the theory’s strengths and the successes of Broken Windows
policing. This requires of criminologists that such tests should
be continued to establish greater clarity on the issue, however
greater awareness of the contexts in which crime and disorder
lie must be taken in order to provide useful answers to such
unresolved questions. This research intends to do just this, and
to add to an emerging body of literature that tests the claims of
Broken Windows theory by testing the links between ‘disorder’
(in this case pertaining exclusively to graffiti writing) and
crime. In doing so it also seeks to contribute to understandings
of the effectiveness of Broken Windows policing. With its remit
being strictly focused on graffiti writing, and the city of
Canterbury, it should perhaps be viewed as yet another piece in
a larger puzzle of discerning how accurate Broken Windows
theory can be considered to be. Given that the ideas expressed
in the Broken Windows thesis continue to exert a heavy
influence over contemporary criminal justice practice (Becket
and Godoy, 2010), it remains criminology’s task to continue to
test and critique this theory, as well as offer alternatives where
it is shown to be insufficient in explaining the reality of crime
and disorder in urban neighbourhoods.
As well as a body of literature that both tests and critiques
Wilson and Kelling’s highly influential claims, this study will
also add to knowledge related to understanding where graffiti

40. tends to be written, the impact it has on its surroundings and the
relationship between these dynamics. In particular it will also
contribute to a tentative body of literature that reflects on
changes in the behaviour of writers amidst aggressive policing
of their activities, the emergence of digital technology being
used to share images of writing (see Snyder, 2006, 2009), and
shifts in graffiti’s meaning in mainstream culture (Ferrell et al,
2008). Moreover, with this contextualised analysis it will re-
evaluate whether Broken Windows, in light of these potential
changes, is more or less equipped to explain the effect of
graffiti’s impact on its area as a visible sign of ‘disorder’.
The chapters that follow will detail the study’s findings, how
they were collected and analysed, and how they relate back to
this body of literature. Beginning with a methodology chapter
that will detail the research design and explain how it relates to
these discussions, the thesis will progress to reveal its findings
whilst constantly looking back to the body of literature detailed
here as a reference point. Thus, the arguments and studies
detailed here should be kept in mind, and will be referred to,
throughout the duration of the rest of this thesis.
Chapter III:
Methodology
Having acknowledged the gaps and ambiguities within existing
knowledge on Broken Windows theory’s (Wilson and Kelling,
1982) accuracy and the effectiveness of Broken Windows
policing, here I will outline the methods used in this project’s
attempt to answer its research questions and help establish some
clarity on the topic. What follows, then, is the detailing of: the
method used; the decision making and interpretation involved in
several stages in the research; some of the shortcomings
previously identified in the use of such methods; and how such
shortcomings have been compensated for within aspects of the
methodology engaged here. Following in the vein of Ralph
Taylor’s (1999, 2001) use of various methods to come to

41. understand the validity of Broken Windows theory in Baltimore,
this chapter will detail how the mixed methods approach
adopted here, which utilises examples of both quantitative and
qualitative approaches, provides the best means of answering
our research questions. As was concluded at the end of the last
chapter, studies that have pursued a purely method have both
individually and collectively told us relatively little about the
accuracy of Broken Windows theory and the success of its
associated policing practices. Proceeding in two sections,
organised around the two respective stages of quantitative
analysis and qualitative research conducted as part of this
thesis, this chapter will also outline how the research conducted
here provides the broad picture and small-scale specificity
required to address this issue.
Quantifying and Mapping Crime and Graffiti: The Search for
Correlations
In the first stage of this research, a combination of crime maps
populated with recorded crime data and photography will be
utilised to first quantify crime and graffiti in Canterbury, before
identifying correlations between these variables. Though it is
therefore a quantitative method used here, this is not to be
confused with a strictly ‘scientific’ process by any means: it
instead involves subjective decision-making and interpretation
on the part of the researcher at several stages[footnoteRef:3].
Thus, this section will not only reveal the specifics of this
methods, but it will also acknowledge where, how and why such
judgements have been made and acted upon, as well as how
weaknesses in this method have been confronted. It will, of
course, also highlight the value of the insights that can be
gained through the use of this approach. [3: Furthermore, the
subjectivity within crime statistics is recognised. As Lea and
Young (1942: 12-13) put it, ‘both the interpretation of whether
or not an act is criminal and the resources available for
labelling acts as criminal make an enormous amount of
difference to the final statistic. Nor is this a result of an

42. imperfect world where, if only we had more tightly written laws
and a lot more police, we could arrive at the ‘true’ crime rate.
Rather, it lies in the nature of crime itself that there is an
important level of human interpretation in the definition of what
is criminal’]
Recorded crime statistics were drawn from the newly-launched
police.uk website and used to quantify crime within 10 selected
areas of the city for the 6 month period of December 2011-May
2012. The designation of these 10 zones was based on the
researcher’s decision making, though underpinned by an attempt
to replicate the conditions being tested to those described in the
Broken Windows thesis. The leading imperative was that each
of the ‘zones’ designated for this research project be roughly of
equal size and, where possible, their boundaries were selected
so that each would represent an identifiable part of the city or a
neighbourhood/estate as they are regarded locally. Thus, zones
include the Knight’s Avenue Estate, Spring Lane Estate, or the
city centre which is separated from the rest of Canterbury by the
medieval city walls. This was done in an effort in to replicate,
as accurately as possible, the conditions described by Wilson
and Kelling in their article; where the emphasis is placed
around their being a manifestation of communities or
‘communal barriers’ (1982: 34) that are affected by fear of
crime and, then, criminal invasion. By trying to make these
zones applicable to areas in the town that are likely to consider
themselves communities, such as a self-contained housing
estates, it is hoped that this has been successfully replicated
somewhat so that the analysis provides the most appropriate
framework for testing this thesis and answering the research
questions.
The process of quantifying graffiti was similarly based on
interpretation, though a logical one, as there appeared no self-
evident method of quantifying writing objectively. Indeed such
problems in enumerating graffiti have been previously
acknowledged to be troublesome. As Greg Snyder notes, the

43. very nature of graffiti makes it hard to quantify exactly the
amount in any given area: while some is plainly visible, some
remains intentionally hidden in concealed locations and will
often evade the sights of local residents, authorities and touring
researchers. While it is therefore ‘difficult to compare the
amount of graffiti in an exact quantitative fashion’ (2009: 51) in
a study of this nature, exploring these areas by foot and
documenting writing via photography remains the most viable
way of doing so. Bearing this in mind, other scholars have
sought to use of photography as a means of quantifying writing
in urban spaces; where previous examples include Snyder’s
(2009) photography of mailbox graffiti in New York, as well as
Heitor Alvelos’ (2004) long term study of urban graffiti using
similar visual methods. Marked on the map shown below are, as
well as the boundaries of each zone being studied, the locations
in which graffiti was found on walking tours of the city. These
are represented by black dots. Dots were marked for locations
where there was interpreted to be a noticeable and substantial
amount of graffiti: locations in which there were one or two
relatively small tags were ignored, whilst anything upwards
from 3 or 4 tags or any larger pieces and murals (or a
combination of these types of writing) visible from the same
spot saw the marking of a dot on the map. This was based on a
reasoning that again related back to the Broken Windows thesis:
it was judged that an area with a more dense collection of
writing would be more likely to give the impression of repeated
criminality that would inspire fear of crime in residents, thus
potentially giving the impression of an ‘uncontrolled and
uncontrollable’ environment (Wilson and Kelling 1982: 34),
whilst an isolated tag could be more easily dismissed or
disregarded by locals. Thus, to categorise a single tag on a par
with more conspicuous clusters of writing would both
misrepresent the prevalence of writing across the city and see
the research divert from the nature of Broken Windows claims.
In addition, to avoid marking locations too close together and
misrepresenting one pocket of writing as two clusters, if two

44. examples of graffiti were within seeing distance of one another
(this often constituted a distance of no more than around 50
metres) then only this only counted towards the marking of one
dot.
Following the quantification of each of the variables (‘graffiti’
and ‘crime’) through these 10 areas of the city, analysis of this
data was conducted to determine what correlations lie between
these two measurements; whether meaningful relationship
between graffiti and crime exist across the city. SPSS was used
to process the data and to conduct this analysis. This formed the
extent of the quantitative element of the project and will serve
to test the basic premise of Wilson and Kelling’s thesis by
revealing whether, through an observed positive correlation, it
appears the graffiti and crime tend populate the same areas (as
is implied by Broken Windows logic). The value of such an
approach, regarding obtaining answers to our research
questions, is that provides a broad picture of the relationship
between crime and graffiti across the city: offering basic
indications of the theory’s accuracy concerning graffiti’s causal
relationship with wider crime, and a testing the empirical
foundation on which Broken Windows policing is allegedly
based.
The map of Canterbury produced through the first stage of this
research, where the demarcations for each of the 10 zones and
pockets of graffiti have been plotted
Zone Key:1 = City Centre, 2 = Wincheap,
3 = Knight’s Avenue Estate, 4 = St. Dunstan’s Area,
5 = St. Stephen’s Area, 6 = Hales Place Estate,
7 = Vauxhall Road Estate, 8 = Military Road Area,
9 = Spring Lane Estate, 10 = Old Dover Road Area
The Shortcomings of Official Data and Crime Mapping
While there is evident value in using both recorded data and

45. forms of mapping to obtain an idea of crime levels across
Canterbury, in a process offers that practical advantages of
convenience and a lack of expense and gives a broad view of the
relationship between graffiti and crime, potential problems do
arise from the use of official data and forms of crime mapping
that underpins this approach. These problems have, however,
been acknowledged and compensated for in the methodological
design of this research, meaning that such shortcomings’ impact
on our ability to effectively answer the research questions
remain limited. The nature of these problems, as well moves to
restrict their negative impact and offer solutions to them, will
be outlined in this section.
Police.uk’s mapping of recorded crime data across the UK’s
streets, which maps crime for each street in the UK and makes
data freely available to any individual interested in ‘identifying
crimes right on their doorstep anywhere in the country’
(Whitehead, 2011: 1), presents new opportunities for
criminologists interested in researching crime rates by allowing
researchers (and the public) to chart the distribution of crime
across and within an entire city at the click of a few
buttons[footnoteRef:4]. Whilst this innovative method of
presenting data freely on this internet offers convenience for
scholars interested in studying crime rate, pre-existing concerns
regarding the validity and reliability of official data dictate that
we must continue to exercise caution in how we use such crime
statistics in research. Amongst criminologists and statisticians
alike, the long-standing criticism of crime figures is that they
‘do not give a clear picture of the social or situational context
of crimes’ (Maguire 2002: 343) and remains a powerful check
on the use of official data as the base for any research seeking
to accurately convey the reality of crime. Certainly, it is widely
known amongst criminologists that problems of differing
interpretations of criminality that impact upon decisions
whether to report record or crimes on the part of several actors,
a dark figure of crime, and a variety of other shortcomings
severely affect crime data’s ability to do so (see, for example,

46. Mclintock, 1963, Cicourel, 1968). In light of this, the
‘subjective and political nature of the ‘official’ crime statistics’
(Lea and Young, 1984: 16) sees such data regarded as
‘embodiments of police discretion’ and ‘governmental agenda’
(Ferrell et al, 2008: 195-196) rather than hard facts by some. It
may then appear that the use of such data may jeopardise the
project’s ability to test the Broken Windows thesis with
accuracy. That would certainly be the case if they were relied to
convey a precise picture of crime throughout the city of
Canterbury. However in a basic capacity crime statistics
maintain the ability to notify us of increases or decreases in
crime, as well as providing a basis on which we can compare
levels of criminality across different areas, therefore potentially
fulfilling a viable role in a variety of criminological projects.
As John Lea and Jock Young remind us, it would be a mistake
to dismiss them entirely: [4: One should always keep an eye
out for anomalies produced by errors in data, however, as there
have been teething problems with the police.uk project. For
instance, one street in Preston was recorded as having suffered
152 incidents of recorded crime in a single month, despite only
actually having has 3 incidents (Bunyan, 2011)!]
‘We must handle the figures with caution, and, most
importantly, that we must develop a sense of realism. We must
avoid both the alarmism which takes the figures simply at their
face value and the sense of false calm which insists that the
same statistics are a mere product of police practices’ (Lea and
Young, 1984: 16)
What remains crucial is that criminologists approach official
crime data ‘in a critical frame of mind’ (Maguire, 2002: 322),
namely by being aware of such failings and accommodating for
them in their methodological designs. By and large, crime
statistics have proven useful when allowing criminologists to
largely discern when crime is increasing or declining and
whether particular areas suffer from particularly high or low
levels of crime, rather than being relied upon to convey an

47. accurate representation of the nature or a precise measurement
of crime and its effects more generally (Lea and Young, 1984).
It is in this limited capacity that such statistics are used in this
project, where data is merely used to provide a general
measurement of crime that allows the research to establish
which areas of Canterbury tend to suffer from higher crime
rates than others for the purpose of identifying correlations.
A similar (but healthy) scepticism is useful when assessing
the usefulness of crime mapping in conveying an accurate
picture of crime; a practice intricately connected with the
collection of crime statistics as it sees such data plotted on
forms of maps (e.g. police.uk). Whilst practices of
geographically mapping crime extend back to ‘the progenitors
of environmental criminology’ (Hayward, 2012a: 443) in the
Chicago school of sociology (see Park, 1925, Burgess, 1925), it
is in the last couple of decades that contemporary forms of
crime mapping have become an increasingly popular method of
presenting official data and regarded as an effective method
through which authorities and criminologist alike may come to
understand crime and measure the performance of those tasked
with reducing it. As Mike Maguire notes in relation to such
techniques:
‘the amount of sophistication of analysis will also grow as data
from different sources are increasingly combined in ‘data
warehouses’, ‘mapped’ via grid references, and so on –
developments being actively encouraged by the new regional
‘crime reduction directors’ who have been appointed to
facilitate the work of local crime and disorder partnerships’
(Maguire, 2002: 369).
While there is clearly great fervour for the development of
crime mapping on the part of administrative criminologists (see
also Harries, 1999), authorities across the country and also the
public, there have, however, been an abundance of problems
identified with developing an understanding of crime purely
from the bird’s-eye gaze of crime maps. The most pertinent of
which is that crime mapping actually does very little to

48. illuminate understandings of urban criminality by encouraging
the criminologist to engage with crime from an abstracted and
detached position, therefore making them ignorant to the
intricacies of street level conditions in which crime is
committed and the complexities of the criminal act itself. The
kind of city seen through such maps and designs is referred to
by de Certeau (1984) as the ‘Concept-city’; Keith Hayward
explains:
‘This is the city as seen by planners, developers, statisticians
and, all too often, criminologists. Here the pluralistic fabric and
contradictions inherent in urban life… are distilled to leave only
quantitative data, demographics and rational discourse’ (2004:
2).
Such an understanding of the city, where one may gaze from a
bird’s-eye view to see a city void of human inhabitants, is,
however, problematic:
‘The problem… is that the life of the city, the constellation of
lives that make a city what it is, the actual experience of the
city, in other words, is not contained in the concept of the city.
Lives can not be mapped in this way – cannot be read – or even
truly rendered readable by maps… something always slips
away’ (Buchanan, 2000: 110).
As Hayward puts it in relation to urban crime, ‘the unfortunate
thing for… ‘crime analysts’ is that crime, incivility and
transgressive behaviour are very complex, multi-faceted, ever-
changing socio-cultural phenomena’, and thus maps populated
with quantitative data alone are ‘of no use whatsoever in
helping us to understand the complex and diverse social and
cultural motivations and individual experiences behind a great
many criminal offences’ (2004: 110-111). Thus, using crime
maps for research purposes does little to tell us about the
contexts in which crime is committed and the experiences and
motivations behind criminal acts, both of which were identified
as integral to understanding the relationship between crime,
disorder and space in the literature review. In that sense the
maps of police.uk and those created in this research (shown

49. earlier in the chapter), alone, offer relatively little in the testing
of the Broken Windows thesis and answering our research
questions: they tell us where graffiti and crime exist but do very
little in illuminating exactly how one may impact upon the
other.
While the solution to the problems associated with official
crime statistics was seen in limiting their influence over the
project, these issues within mapping practices have been tackled
by adding an alternative view of Canterbury’s streets to the
analysis. Crime mapping and statistics may provide us with a
model through which we can observe the broad distribution of
crime across urban areas (an undoubtedly useful tool in
assessing the Broken Windows account of urban decay), they,
however, only present a computer-generated veneer of city life
and the dynamics of crime, disorder and culture that simmer
underneath. The following section will now outline how these
problems are addressed in the second level of analysis, and how
the research takes its cue from De Certeau and Hayward’s
arguments regarding the need for to see the city as a duality: the
combination of the ‘Concept-city’ perspective alongside an
experiential dimension of urban living that mapping fails to
capture and which can only be obtained from street level
research. This dual mapping, it will be argued, provides
platform from which the research questions can most effectively
be answered by combining the broad perspective developed here
with a close inspection of locations filled with a more vivid and
detailed description of how graffiti and crime interact on a
street level.
Street Level Analysis
While the value of using official statistics, crime mapping and
quantified graffiti writing towards identifying city-wide
correlations between graffiti and crime has been emphasised by
the broad picture it provides, it is correctly uttered by
criminological scholars and statisticians alike that ‘correlation

50. is not causation’ (Hope, 2005: 56, emphasis added). This being
true, the correlations drawn from the first level of analysis in
this research will clearly not suffice to provide a convincing
answer to the issues thrown up by the research questions laid
out at the beginning of this thesis. While they offer a valuable,
yet basic, insight into the accuracy of Broken Windows theory
and the imperative under which Broken Windows policing is
advocated, a second level of more detailed analysis is clearly
required to flesh out this findings and better explain the
relationships lying behind these figures. Such a realisation
among others who have embarked on such analysis has, in the
past and very much the present, led vast swathes of
criminologists further into the depths of regression analysis in
attempts to compensate for this shortcoming and reach casual
explanations with other forms of statistical sophistication.
However, such advanced analytical techniques have previously
been found to be ill-equipped to fulfil such an undertaking
(Mills, 1959, Young, 2011); as was demonstrated by the
collective existence by of an altogether ambiguous statistical
assessment of Broken Windows theory laid out in the last
chapter. The progression to a second level of analysis in this
research, in order to circumnavigate this trading off of statistics
and duelling of data-sets and towards something more useful,
will instead take to the streets to observe first-hand how
dynamics between graffiti, disorder and crime interact.
Quantitative analysis is therefore used in the manner outlined
by Jock Young in The Criminological Imagination (2011),
where the role of this method is both critically viewed and used
‘in a much more limited and circumspect way’ (2011: ix). For
Young, this is ‘a question of setting rules and limits… of
determining where statistical testing is useful and where it is a
distraction’ (2011: 55); words heeded in the restrained use of
statistical analysis outlined above. Therefore, the second level
of analysis adopted here is a qualitative one that is more attuned
to uncovering the subtleties within urban space and writing
practices that may impact on the relationship between graffiti

51. and wider crime (in the vein Paul St. Jean and Ralph Taylor’s
previous work on this topic).
Specifically, this involved the closer inspection of 3 small-scale
studies of areas within the city, developed from the same
walking tours and photographs used to quantify the amount of
graffiti throughout the city; thus providing a more detailed
street-levelanalysis of graffiti’s impact on its immediate
environment. It is through this part of the research that flesh
may be added to the bone of the correlations observed in the
earlier analysis; that we can add a detailed and theoretically
infused critique to the plots on the graph. It is intended that this
element of the research project will develop some of the basic
insights offered by the quantitative analysis and provide a
contextually driven understanding of the relationship to graffiti
in Canterbury. Through an attentive gaze, it will also seek to
provide a vivid description of examples of either the successes
or failures of Broken Windows policing in particular locations
and how the effects of such policing approaches are visible in
such urban spaces. Thus, while the initial analysis will indicate
whether Broken Windows logic and policing appear useful, this
stage of the research will shed light on how and reasons why
Broken Windows logic may un/successfully explain what is
found, and whether Broken Windows policing is successfully
policing these areas.
While the use of visual methods to quantify graffiti has already
been outlined, the second function of the walking tours taken
throughout the city contributes to this second level of analysis
and pertains much more to the critical discussions of mapping
practice outlined in the previous section. Penetrating below the
bird’s-eye-view found on police.uk, and therefore providing a
means through which we may better understand the lived reality
of these locations in the vein of de Certeau’s duality and
Hayward’s cultural criminology, this street-level analysis
provides a means of better knowing the full reality of the
relationship between graffiti and crime in the locations subject
to study here. As Hayward, in his cultural criminological