This presentation examines the work of Wilson & Kelling, popularly known as the "Broken Window Theory."

1. “Broken Windows”
by
James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling
A study and analysis of urban police foot patrol
implementation to address public disorder and violent
crime.
Broken Windows
Presentation by:
Chris Strayer

2. Wilson & Kelling’s
Hypothesis heightened social
Concentrated community policing of perceived
disorder in impoverished urban areas would improve the residents’
perceptions of improved quality of life. As a consequence, by
maintaining order, more violent crimes would be prevented.
Wilson and Kelling seem to be responding to the idea of Durkheim’s
conception of anomie.
fixing broken windows + on-foot policing to prevent disorder=
maintenance of social norms
Durkheim’s work on anomie suggests that Wilson & Kelling should
expect that individuals’ behaviors and passions to be regulated by the
social norms provided in the environment, thereby prevent more
harmful crimes.

3. Methodology
 Philip Zombardo –experiments on vandalism
“vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers – the
sense of mutual regard and the obligation of civility – are
lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares’” (p.31)
 Premise that one of people’s greatest fears is being “bothered
by disorderly people” (p. 30) + conceptual framework that
individuals will conform to societally established norms, if
these norms are signaled within the environment.
 Wilson & Kelling utilized first hand
observation, interviews, and surveys to collect data.

4. Key Concepts
• Fear stems from confrontation with incivility, which
leads to avoidance thereby weakening social controls
(p.33)
• Differentiation of “regulars” from “strangers”
 Regulars = “decent folk” or those “who knew their place
(p. 30)
 Strangers = foot patrolman’s jobs “to keep an eye on
strangers” to ensure widely understood rules were
observed (p.30)
 “Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those
who bothered people *…} were arrested for vagrancy.
Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.” (p.30)

5. Key Concepts (cont.)
• Social norms of the environment were defined and
enforced collaboratively – police & “regulars”
 “The people of Newark *…+ assign a high value to
public order, and feel relieved and reassured
when the police help them maintain that order”
(p. 31).
• Within the community – disorder is perceived to be
sequentially linked to crime
 “if a window in building is broken and is left
unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon
be broken*…+ “one unrepaired broken window is
a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more
windows costs nothing” (p. 31)

6. Conclusion: Police Central to
Maintaining Order
• “The essence of the police role is maintaining order is to reinforce the
informal control mechanisms of the community itself” (p. 34).
• “We must return to our long abandoned view that the police ought to
protect communities as well as individuals [and recognize] the
importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken
windows” (p. 38).
Implications of Broken Window
Theory
• Extensive application by criminal justice departments in large urban
areas, such as New York City and Albuquerque
• Action research conducted in educational institutions and real estate
settings
• Criticisms: promotes overly aggressive policing (zero tolerance)
(Sridhar), racial and economic biases (Sampson &
Raudenbush, 2004), potentially fallacious relations between correlation
and causality (Thacher, 2004).

7. Additional Credits
Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2004). Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the
Social Construction of “Broken Windows”. Social Psychology Quarterly, 67(4), 319-342.
Sridhar, C.R. (13-19). "Broken Windows and Zero Tolerance: Policing Urban Crimes". Economic
and Political Weekly 41 (19): 1841–1843.
Thacher, David. (2004) "Order Maintenance Reconsidered”