The Broken Window Theory as Part of Law Enforcement Policy

The Broken Window Theory as Part of Law Enforcement Policy
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The Broken Window Theory as Part of Law Enforcement Policy

            By 1990, over 2,500 New Yorkers were being murdered annually. According to Karmen (2000), this body count had reduced by 70% by the decade. The number of car thefts, robberies, and other street-related crimes reported at NYPD also plummeted. In academia and public discourse, observers have agreed that this precipitous, unprecedented, widescale, and unexpected fall in crime is nothing less than a miracle. Other criminology scholars like Hagan and Daigle (2019) attribute this drastic change to implementing the Broken Window Theory (BWT) in policing. Therefore, the current paper aims to discuss this theory or policy, its efficacy, and its repercussions, particularly on civil issues.  

The Broken Window Theory and Implementation

            Public order crimes, also called Crimes without Victims, refer to the number of illegal activities on the basis that they offend public morality. These are often non-predatory crimes, including activities like drugs & alcohol abuse, prostitution, gambling offenses, vagrancy, disorderly conduct, and minor forms of sexual deviance. According to Hagan and Daigle (2019), these crimes outnumber other types of crime and have traditionally formed the bulk of police work. In the 1980s and 1990s, these crimes were more prevalent than they are today. The introduction of the Broken Window Theory appears to have played a significant role in reducing these crimes.

            The Broken Window Theory is an academic theory proposed in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. The approach uses broken windows as a metaphor for street crimes that do not necessarily have a victim except for the person carrying it out (Coles & Kelling, 1995). The theory posits that an unrepaired broken window is a signal to people that nobody cares about a building which escalates into further vandalism. Similarly, a petty crime in the streets that seems to have no victims and, therefore, easy to ignore, signals that nobody cares about the community spiraling into similar or more serious crimes involving victims. Accordingly, signals like untended property, obstreperous youth, and disorderly drunks create fear in citizens and open avenues for predators to prevail (Hagan & Daigle, 2019). There is the famous phrase of Sun-Tzu, “in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” Such predators take advantage of these opportunities to fuel more serious crimes and their prevalence, such as they were in New York City in the 1980s and 90s.

            Since the theory holds that preventing non-victim crimes curbs the potential for more serious crimes, the NYPD went for such crimes...