The Broken Windows Theory

by Kelly M. Glenn

The Broken Window Theory was coined by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982 and greatly impacted police work in the decades to follow. The Broken Windows Theory uses the basic metaphor of a broken window to demonstrate how crime and disorder tend to flourish in environments where small problems go unaddressed. As the environment falls into neglect and disrepair, people responsible for crime and disorder interpret the lack of care for the environment as permission to use and abuse it without repercussions.

To better understand the Broken Windows Theory, let’s consider a scenario about a mixed use neighborhood that includes residential homes, businesses, and home-based businesses:

Evan, a song-writer and music producer, once loved his home and his neighborhood, but now that he lives next door to a gory crime scene, he can no longer focus on his work at home. Everytime he looks out of the window of his recording studio, he sees the vacant building in which two homeless men were murdered. Evan decided to put his house on the market, but every time his real estate agent shows his house, he gets the same feedback: the price is too high and the property next door is “a problem.”

Wow! Poor Evan, right? He’s just a hard working guy who wanted his own little corner of the world in which to write and create music. Now, his home isn’t worth what he paid for it all because someone came along and killed two people in the building next door.

Right?

Well, not exactly…at least, not in this case. If the Broken Windows Theory holds true – that crime and disorder tend to flourish in environments where small problems go unaddressed – perhaps there is more to this story.

Let’s find out…

Evan lives on Perkins Avenue. He bought a well-maintained bungalow style home in the late summer. It has a deep, covered front porch and a fenced in front yard. What he loved most about it when he bought it was that the building next door had been vacant for about three months. This meant that he wasn’t disturbing anyone when he opened the window in his home-based recording studio at night and worked on his music. That’s when Evan felt he was at his best. His inspiration would flow until about two in the morning, when he would close up shop and head to bed.

As fall rolled around, the cooler weather welcomed neighbors out onto their own front porches, and Evan noticed that several people enjoyed working in their yards. Leaving the windows open all day long felt amazing. Folks drove up and down the street and usually waved. People of all ages used the sidewalk to walk or jog, and sometimes small children rode their bikes with training wheels. Overall, it was a low-key street, and Evan felt great about his investment.

In fact, Evan felt so good about his home that he overlooked a few less than desirable behaviors by some teens. In the evenings, especially before it got dark early, they adopted the vacant parking lot of the business next door as their own skateboard park. At first, it had seemed like kids just being kids, but after a while, Evan noticed that they had started staying later and later. Once it got dark, it was obvious they were smoking, and he also realized that they had turned a metal trash can into a makeshift fire pit. One night, while recording in his studio, Evan had heard glass break. He shut his window and continued working.

The next day, Evan had looked at the side of the vacant building, and a window had been broken out. It was up high, so he had assumed that one of the teens had launched a rock up there. He had thought about calling someone, but he didn’t think it was serious enough. Besides, Evan had thrown a rock or two in his day. Maybe he just needed to mind his own business? And, if the property owners cared, they’d do something about it, right?

After a few weeks had gone by, most of the glass had been broken out of the windows. Beer bottles and cans littered the steps to the door of the business, and trash kept blowing over into Evan’s yard. Not only was Evan having to clean up after the teens in his own yard, but he could no longer enjoy recording with his windows open. The teens had gotten noisy and distracting. Evan had started feeling his quality of life diminish, and he felt embarrassed to have his relatives over. The teens had begun spray painting obscene gestures on the side of the building.

Fed up, Evan had decided it was time to call the local police department, but he wasn’t sure who to contact. He didn’t feel like this was an emergency, so he had tried the non-emergency dispatch number first. After he had been asked several questions, like:

Is anyone hurt?
Are the kids on scene there now?
Do you know if there are no trespassing signs up?

Evan was transferred to an officer who would take his report over the phone. The officer had noted the property damage, but when he asked Evan if he was the owner of the property, Evan said he was not. The officer explained that the owner really has to be the one making the complaint, as there is no way to determine if the kids do or do not have permission to be there. When Evan had asked about the noise at night, the officer advised him to call when the kids were actually there.

All through the late fall, Evan had called to report when the teens were on scene, smoking, drinking, being loud, and destroying the property, and every time, a patrol unit had been dispatched. The officer typically had pulled into the parking lot and watched the kids take off running. Evan had never wanted to speak to the officer because he didn’t want the kids to know he was the one who had been calling, so the officer would clear the call and leave. This happened night after night.

Evan was frustrated.

As winter rolled around, Evan had noticed that the people huddled around the makeshift fire pit looked a little different. The teenagers who once used the vacant business as a hangout were now home before dark during the week, and they had been replaced by a rougher looking crowd. Evan had soon discovered that this group brought with it used syringes and a few blankets-turned-tents at night. When it had gotten even colder, the tents disappeared and people climbed in and out of a low window to come and go. Evan was pretty sure they had been burning fires inside the building to keep warm at night because he had sometimes seen flickering light coming from inside.

The Broken Windows Theory using the example of drugs

Evan had felt conflicted. He had a friend who had gotten hooked on some pretty hard drugs right out of high school, and he had heard that the friend became homeless after his family kicked him out. Life is hard, and everyone needs somewhere warm to sleep. On the other hand, Evan had worked so hard to buy his house, and he knew that the condition of the building next door had decreased his own property value. Plus, the activity and distractions had made it more difficult to work.

Evan had also gotten pretty frustrated with the police department. Their lack of interest in finding a long-term solution had made him feel like they didn’t care about his neighborhood, and he had gotten equally as angry with the property owners next door for just letting the building go. He eventually stopped calling the police, so imagine his surprise when he woke up to the sight of blue and red lights flashing through the window of his bedroom one night. When Evan had tried to go outside to see what had happened, he was ordered by a police officer to go back inside.

The next morning, Evan had learned that one of the homeless men had killed two other homeless men as they slept in the building. The offender had been taken into custody after he had barricaded himself inside for a three-hour standoff with police. The building had been cleared and secured as a crime scene, and for the next two days, officers had been seen going in and out, carrying bags and boxes of evidence. A construction company had shown up a few days later to install plywood in the windows, and a leftover piece of yellow crime scene tape left on a railing still billows in the wind to this day.

Using the Broken Windows Theory, we can now see that serious crime and disorder certainly can stem from small problems that go unaddressed over time. So, if we’ve known about this theory since the 1980s, how does crime and disorder continue to persist?

To answer this question, we first have to look to human nature. Human nature leads us to believe or assume that when we see an environment that is not well maintained, it means no one cares about it. Thus, if we were to further destroy or diminish that environment, there would be little to no repercussions because again…no one cares enough to maintain it in the first place.

To drive this point home, think about a scenario that many of us find ourselves in on a regular basis:

Imagine parking beside two different types of cars. One car is a classic. It’s been washed and waxed. The tires are shiney and the tread looks new. Are you going to be concerned with dinging the door of that car? Probably. Someone obviously cares about it. In fact, they might even care about it enough to go through the trouble of having you fix any damage you are responsible for! What about the other car that has a bag for a window and duct tape holding the rear bumper on? Are you going to care as much if you ding the door of that car? If we’re being honest…probably not. The appearance of care matters! Maintenance matters!

The Broken Windows Theory example using cars

Another reason crime and disorder continue to persist is that, as with most crime prevention theories and techniques, interventions require collaboration between law enforcement and the community it serves if those interventions are to lead to long-term successes. One person does not often hold the authority, knowledge, and ability to implement interventions that will have a significant positive impact, so we must rely on partnerships to supplement what we, ourselves, may lack. If individuals are met with resistance or apathy from potential community partners at the get-go, they may feel incapable of instigating the kind of positive change they want.

Collaboration
Problem-solving
Criminal Justice Know How

Finally, crime and disorder persist despite our knowledge of solid crime prevention measures because the individuals or organizations that could implement successful interventions don’t understand or recognize the buy-in. In other words, they don’t know why it’s important to do the labor intensive work of crime prevention when being reactive deceptively feels so much easier. It takes education and communications about what the long-term pay-off could be if individuals and organizations are to have buy-in.

In our scenario, a lot of things were working against Evan! In fact, there was quite the combination of “no one cares,” lack of coordination, and little buy-in. Using Evan and the problems at the vacant building next door to his house, let’s take a look at what was missing and how things could have turned out differently.

While Evan, himself, had buy-in (desire to have a peaceful, safe, and valuable home), he lacked the willingness to collaborate with the local police department because he didn’t want the teens to know he was the one calling. Is that a valid concern? Yes. Did it contribute to the problem? Also, yes.

The local police department didn’t have buy-in because they didn’t recognize the potential to prevent serious crime. They seemed complacent to repeat the same ineffective, short-term response every time, but they also didn’t have much of a chance to collaborate or gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem because Evan didn’t want to speak with them. With that said, there were other individuals, departments, and organizations they could have collaborated with.

The police department could have attempted to partner with the owner of the vacant building. He or she should have had buy-in, but for unknown reasons, they didn’t act on it. Perhaps the owner got sick? Perhaps the owner was an out of town corporation? Perhaps the owner just didn’t care? We don’t know, but even if the property owner was unreachable or uncooperative, through collaboration with other city departments, the police department may have been able to identify some creative ways to address the issues.

Another missed opportunity for collaboration was with local nonprofits and organizations that offer mentor programs for teens, as well as those that provide shelter and addiction services for the homeless populations. Obviously, the teens and homeless men had no buy-in to maintain the vacant building or improve the neighborhood Evan loved so much, but people sometimes do buy-in to improving themselves!

Finally, we cannot overlook the potential solutions that could have been identified by collaborating with other residents in the neighborhood. By establishing a neighborhood watch, the community could have come together to brainstorm or even to form a response team that could have participated in a site assessment with trained crime prevention specialists (see CPTED). From there, a response plan could have been adopted (see The SARA Model).

Clearly, there are many ways that small problems can be addressed before they evolve into crime and disorder. It simply takes a commitment to caring, collaboration with people who can enact change, and buy-in from those partners who understand the long-term pay-off of repairing broken windows.