Is the Broken Windows Theory of Policing Effective?

Introduction to the Broken Windows Theory

In their article "Broken Windows," Wilson and Kelling offer an in-depth explanation of how the orderliness or disorderliness of a community can affect the perception of its crime rate. They describe how lawmakers in New Jersey chose to enforce this policy by putting police officers back on the street to walk beats, rather than patrol in cars. Although Wilson and Kelling both acknowledge that foot patrols did little to change actual crime rates, they noted that those patrols produced a change in neighborhood attitude and demeanor. While crime rates may not have changed, residents in those neighborhoods perceived a difference — particularly with respect to violent crime.

The theory posited by Wilson and Kelling was that active policing reduced the level of disorderliness in a neighborhood, which in turn made people more likely to remain engaged in their communities rather than retreat behind closed doors. The theoretical suggestion was that this shift in community attitude would eventually affect crime rates. It is widely believed that almost all urban neighborhoods go through cycles of decline, and whether a cycle of decline is followed by rejuvenation depends largely on how invested community members are in that neighborhood. Because the level of neighborhood commitment is linked to the likelihood that a community can resist an influx of crime, it follows that non-criminal disorderly conduct should have a long-term impact on crime rates.

However, no sufficient long-term studies have been able to conclusively determine whether reducing a neighborhood's rate of disorderly conduct does in fact produce a lasting decline in crime. In the short term, foot patrols have not had an appreciable impact on crime rates, and in some areas crime has actually risen. Of course, it is impossible to know whether that rise was greater than, less than, or equal to what would have occurred without foot patrols. While some studies have compared crime hot spots within the same neighborhoods, no two areas share identical social conditions, making it effectively impossible to fully understand the long-term impact of community policing on future crime rates.

This ambiguity has led many to question whether focusing on community disorder is an appropriate use of limited police resources. According to Bernard Harcourt, police efforts should move away from policing disorderly conduct (Harcourt & Thacher, 2005). He does not believe there is sufficient empirical support to suggest that foot patrols can actually reduce real crime rates, especially violent crime. He challenges the one empirical study supporting this idea by arguing that the crime reduction observed in those areas was inevitable. That study showed a decline in crime in areas that had been hardest hit by the crack-cocaine-driven crime wave, and Harcourt contends that because those areas experienced the greatest increases in crime, they were simply likely to see the greatest decreases once the crack cocaine crisis subsided.

Critiques of Broken Windows Policing

Furthermore, Harcourt cited a study he helped conduct showing that people who used housing vouchers to move out of low-income neighborhoods did not have lower crime rates than those who chose to remain in high-crime areas (Harcourt & Thacher, 2005). His conclusion was therefore that neighborhood order or disorder does not affect crime rates. However, Wilson and Kelling's original argument specifically emphasized that neighborhood commitment helps determine criminality. The very fact that people used vouchers to leave their neighborhoods indicates a lack of commitment to those communities. One might therefore expect people who had failed to establish roots in their previous neighborhood to behave similarly in their next one. Harcourt does not address this incongruity; he simply compares the overall crime rates of those who stayed and those who left — a fundamentally different question from whether foot patrols can have a long-term impact on crime and disorderliness, including reversing traditional signs of urban decay.

It should come as no surprise, then, that not everyone agrees with Harcourt's negative assessment of the broken windows theory. Thacher, for example, disagrees with Harcourt's view even though he also believes that the theory has not been conclusively supported by social science research. Thacher points out that Harcourt's position reveals a central weakness in the social science approach to the broken windows debate:

"Somehow the question of whether police should take order maintenance more seriously got equated with the question of whether doing that would reduce crime. I think that's an interesting and a little dispiriting comment on our culture. It's consequentialism gone awry: nothing is worthwhile in itself; you have to show that it has some other good consequence before doing it. As if there were no reason for a cop walking by to do something about a guy urinating in the middle of the street in a commercial district; or to tell a man who propositions and harasses every woman who walks past him to cut it out; or to lay down some rules with a panhandler who gets in people's faces and won't take no for an answer; or to tell a guy lying down on the subway steps, blocking people who are trying to get to work, that he's got to get up — unless by doing all these things the cop would prevent a statistically significant number of burglaries next month." (Harcourt & Thacher, 2005).

Thacher's Defense and the Limits of Social Science

In short, Thacher's point is that police should address disorderly conduct because that conduct has a negative impact on quality of life in a neighborhood, even if it does not directly increase the risk of violent crime.

Kelling and Coles would tend to agree with Thacher's view. They believe that the level of fear in a neighborhood has a direct impact on its crime rates, and that fear of crime is linked to neighborhood disorderliness. Local officials and citizens have long been focused on disorder, even though it has traditionally been overlooked by law enforcement. In San Francisco, residents reported avoiding certain areas because of disorderly behavior, and many were arming themselves — with weapons or dogs — against people they found threatening. Many of those individuals were homeless, and early enforcement actions faced legal challenges (Kelling & Coles, 1998). While some of those initial efforts did not pass constitutional muster, many local governments have since passed effective ordinances aimed at reducing disorderly behavior, resulting in residents reporting less fear and greater comfort. Community perception of crime is more important to community satisfaction than actual crime statistics, because people respond to their perceptions. Therefore, even if the broken windows theory is incorrect and social disorder does not breed more serious offenses, community policing still appears capable of producing a positive impact on neighborhoods.

Moreover, Thacher reiterates that existing social science research is unable to confirm or deny the validity of the broken windows theory. As he argues, "both the critics and the proponents of Broken Windows underestimate how hard it is to study an issue like this in a convincing way" (Harcourt & Thacher, 2005). Creating a proper control situation for a broken windows study is nearly impossible; if a police department engages in broken windows-style foot patrols, ignoring one crime hot spot to serve as a control could expose the local government to serious legal liability. Studies that compare areas across two cities or neighborhoods do not present a valid experimental situation either. Thacher does believe, however, that the one study which most rigorously examines the impact of police presence in high-crime areas tends to support the broken windows theory.