Discretion in Law Enforcement

Role of Discretion in Law Enforcement

Human civilization has always been defined by the establishment of ethical codes, laws which individuals must obey for the greater good of society, and for every rule that mankind has devised there have been those willing to transgress. Criminal misconduct has remained a pervasive and prevalent issue across all cultures and historical eras, spanning the spectrum of age, gender and socioeconomic status, and the invariable commission of illicit acts demonstrates one of humanity's most enduring social dilemmas. Public officials, police forces and private citizens alike have routinely attempted to mitigate the consequences of crime through preventative measures, by anticipating offenses before they occur and incarcerating those who are most prone to engage in criminal activity. While the predictive power of personality profiles and prior behaviors is well documented, other attributes like religious affiliation, ethnic identification and racial background are increasingly being used to extrapolate expected crime rates. The concept of law enforcement agencies profiling certain population groups to predict the occurrence of criminal acts has become notorious in the wake of institutionalized, racially motivated abuses, but a groundbreaking theory published in 1982 by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling expands the idea, attributing high rates of criminal activity to the relative upkeep of surrounding neighborhood features. The revolutionary "Broken Windows" model of crime prevention as posited by Wilson and Kelling holds that "if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken" (1982), with an escalating series of criminal activity stemming indirectly from the untended building, and thus the untended behavior, of nearby inhabitants. The following literature review will examine the efficacy of the "Broken Windows" approach to anticipating and mitigating crime, by analyzing the evidence gathered throughout over three decades of law enforcement experience with the technique.

The work Wilson and Kelling published regarding their "Broken Windows" theory was largely premised on the research of Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Working to test the theory of deindividuation, which described a proposed "process in which a series of antecedent social conditions lead to a change in perception of self and others, and thereby to a lowered threshold of normally restrained behavior" (1969), Zimbardo designed a number of ingenious experiments in the late 1960's that ultimately provided the foundations for Wilson and Kelling's eventual interpretation of the "Broken Window" phenomenon. By placing an identical pair of 1959 Oldsmobile autos on two distinctly different streets, one adjacent to the Bronx campus of New York University in an area where crime rates and gang activity were high, and the other on a street in Palo Alto, California near the affluent area surrounding the Stanford University campus, Zimbardo tested the effects of environmental cues on the willingness of individuals to commit an increasingly serious series of criminal act. Although in both cases the cars had left with no license plates and their hoods up, to provide what Zimbardo terms "releaser cues" that signal societal apathy, the behavior observed in Palo Alto, where manicured lawns adorned suburban strip malls and upper-class neighborhoods, was decidedly different than the scene in the Bronx. While the car left idle near Stanford was left unmolested for more than a week, with passersby seemingly uninterested in committing acts of vandalism or theft, the abandoned vehicle triggered an almost instantaneous response of deindividuation, as locals immediately stripped the car bare of usable parts, committed 23 separate acts of vandalism, and integrated the scrapped shell into their surroundings as a makeshift playground for children to climb on.

According to Wison and Kelling's interpretation of Zimbardo's findings, "because of the nature of community life in the Bronx -- its anonymity, the frequency with which cars are abandoned and things are stolen or broken, the past experience of 'no one caring' -- vandalism begins much more quickly than it does in staid Palo Alto, where people have come to believe that private possessions are cared for, and that mischievous behavior is costly" (1982). This consistently observable phenomenon provided the underlying premise of the "Broken Window" theory of crime prevention, because Wilson and Kelling argued that the simple act of maintaining an area's public edifices, repainting defaced walls and repairing broken windows, prevented the destabilizing effects of deindividuation from becoming pervasive within a community. The original article published by Wilson and Kelling in The Atlantic Monthly focused on the role of police officers to establish localized systems of neighborhood rules, such as prohibitions on loitering or public drunkenness, as a method of ensuring order maintenance through law enforcement. An extension of the original "Broken Window" conceit, the public demonstration of institutional order through enforcement of minor laws, in conjunction with a mutual sense of respect for other behaviors technically classified as crimes, assured residents that their area is being maintained and monitored (1982). This assurance provided two preventative barriers to the future occurrence of crime: a collective sense of community pride; and a disincentive to engage in the petty acts of vandalism that statistically precipitate more serious criminal activity, because these transgressions will most likely result in investigation, arrest, and incarceration.