An Author’s Brief History of an Idea

Abstract

In our 1982 essay, ''The Police and Neighborhood Safety: Broken Windows,'' James Q. Wilson and I contended that disorderly conditions and behavior like public urination, graffiti, aggressive panhandling, and public drunkenness seriously disrupted urban life (Wilson and Kelling 1982). Further, we speculated that disorderly conditions and behavior could be sequentially linked to serious crime, as citizens become fearful and retreat from public spaces predatory behavior increases. We illustrated the argument with a metaphor: Just as a broken window left untended is a sign that nobody cares and leads to more broken windows, so disorderly behavior and conditions left untended are signs that nobody cares and lead to increased disorder, citizen fear of crime, serious crime, and urban decay. Moreover, we contended that even though maintaining order had traditionally been a core police function, for a variety of reasons police had withdrawn from most order maintenance activities during the mid-twentieth century. Although we believed that police should do something about disorder, at that time we were not sure what-concerned as we were about issues of justice, equity, and racism and limited by the state of police thinking of the time. Contemporary readers should understand: ''Broken Windows'' was written in 1982 when community policing and problem solving were

Dissecting Disorder Perceptions: Neighborhood Structure and the Moderating Role of Interethnic Contact and Xenophobic Attitudes

“…Hunter (1978) hypothesized that incivilities “communicate…the loss of a civil society [and] generate fear and insecurity among urban residents” (p. 7). Further elaborating this idea, Kelling and Wilson’s (Kelling, 2015; Kelling & Wilson’s, 1982) Broken Windows theory and Skogan’s (1990) concept of “disorder and decline” proposed a causal chain by which disorder increases fear which subsequently weakens informal social control. These processes are assumed to send encouraging signals to potential offenders, in turn increasing crime and ultimately resulting in downward spirals of neighborhood decay.…”

Reimagining Broken Windows

“…In some respects this may be fitting, reflecting the evolution of the term and its many interpretations in the scientific as well as policy and practitioner communities. We refer to it as a perspective, Kelling (2015) refers to it as an idea, and the authors of the other articles in the special issue adopt various usages. We did not seek to apply a standard usage; the freedom of choice seemed important and perhaps necessary in a project on reimagining broken windows.…”

“…Reflecting on the intent as well as the context of his 1982 article, Kelling (2015) calls attention to the need to put at center stage the perspective's focus on community residents and their desire to live without fear of crime and violence. He is also unwavering in his calls for innovation in public policy responses to disorder.…”

A Longitudinal Study of Police Differential Response Team Impact on Crime in Houston: A Test of Broken Windows Thesis

“…The current study makes at least two important contributions to the existing literature on policing disorder. First, Kelling (2015: 628) has observed with insight that the task of “fixing of broken windows” goes far beyond the act of increasing misdemeanor arrests. He notes in this regard: the common misconception “… that broken windows policing is based on police making numerous arrests.…”