From ‘Neighborhood Watch’ to real-life superheroes, keeping communities safe from crime is a top priority for American citizens. Now, should community policing focus on resolving personal and domestic disputes, or signs of physical decay as suggested by the theory of “broken windows?”
WHAT’S THIS THEORY?
Basically, the broken windows conflates urban and architectural decay with social deterioration: a building where a broken window goes unrepaired will soon be subject to far more extensive vandalism. In other words, the theory suggests that uncontrolled minor crimes will trigger more serious ones.
But now research led by Northeastern University assistant professor Daniel T. O’Brien has leveraged Big Data to shed new light on the factors that predict criminal activity in urban neighborhoods, Phys reports.
STRESSFUL SOCIAL ECOLOGY
The researchers found that private conflict – rather than minor offenses going unchallenged – may be a stronger predictor of crime in a community.
“Our research suggests that the ‘broken windows model’ doesn’t effectively capture the origins of crime in a neighborhood,” O’Brien said. “What’s happening is that violent crime is bubbling out from the social dynamics of the community, out from these private conflicts that already exist, and then is escalating and spilling into public spaces.”
URBAN INFORMATICS
O’Brien’s research uses Big Data in conjunction with traditional methodologies to explore the behavioral and social dynamics of urban neighborhoods. The study is an example of “urban informatics”, or the use of information and communications technology, to better understand cities.
Examining the 911 and 311 data the researchers developed six measures—public social disorder, public violence not involving guns; domestic violence and other private conflicts; gun violence, and private neglect in neighborhoods, and public denigration in neighborhoods. What they found is that social disorder and crime emerge not from public cues but from private ones.
Private conflict was in fact the strongest leading indicator of crime in the “social escalation model”. The study suggests that what’s happening behind closed doors could spill into the public space and affect a neighborhood’s quality of life. Physical and social forms of public disorder – on the other hand – were weakly predictive of future violence and disorder.
PUBLIC OR PRIVATE?
The study follows efforts to explain the original intentions of the broken windows theory by George Kelling who developed the theory theory, together with late criminologist James Q. Wilson, more than 30 years ago.
With the highly publicized deaths of a number of African-Americans like Eric Garner at the hands of white police officers over the past years, so-called broken-windows policing has come under attack by activists and academics alike.
Garner was selling untaxed, loose cigarettes—a minor offense—on a commercial strip of Staten Island, NY, when a group of police officers tried to arrest him. He resisted, a struggle ensued, and the officers brought the 350-pound asthmatic to the ground by choke holding him. Garner died. Police critics said that his death demonstrated the dangers of broken windows policing, notably for minorities.
GOOD BROKEN WINDOWS POLICING
Yet in a post titled “Don’t Blame My ‘Broken Windows’ Theory For Poor Policing” Kelling maintains that his theory has been largely misunderstood.
“Broken windows was never intended to be a high-arrest program,” the author writes. He claims that broken-windows policing is actually a “highly discretionary set of activities that seeks the least intrusive means of solving a problem”.
Kelling explains that depending on the circumstances, “good broken windows policing” seeks to join hands with a set of different partners – ranging from social workers to medical personnel and others – in order to resolve an issue.
“The goal is to reduce the level of disorder in public spaces so that citizens feel safe, are able to use them, and businesses thrive. Arrest of an offender is supposed to be a last resort—not the first.”
What do you think of broken windows policing? Share your experiences in the comments section below.
