Fixing Broken Windows. - book review

Public Interest, Wntr, 1997 by William A. Galston

Yet Kelling and Coles do more than explain the proximate causes of rising disorder. Their second major contribution is to trace the rise, during the past decade, of a new model of policing which is the product of the broken-windows thesis. The old model focused on violent crime; the new model begins with public disorder and fear as the precursors of violent crime. The old model focused on apprehension, the new one on prevention. Policing under the new model is rooted in communities, rests on the cooperation of citizens, devolves authority away from central bureaucracies toward neighborhoods, and employs particularized tactics that require a substantial measure of discretion for front-line officers on the beat.

The new model also requires a new balance between the liberty interests of individuals and community concerns about public order and safety; not surprisingly, it has provoked conflict between local authorities and doctrinaire civil libertarians. (Kelling and Coles trace, in detail, the way in which this conflict has played out in a number of communities, and they recommend that public authorities build the expectation of legal challenges into the planning of order-restoration strategies.)

What about results? While still fragmentary, the evidence to date is highly encouraging. New York City, which has embraced the new model most systematically, has witnessed substantial reductions in offenses of all sorts. The attack on graffiti and disorderly behavior in subway facilities successfully conveyed the message that public authorities would no longer tolerate disorder; and a decline in violent subway crimes soon followed. Meanwhile, the attack above ground on aggressive panhandlers and "squeegee men" sent the same message, with equally impressive consequences. For example, while the national murder rate declined by 5 percent in 1994, for New York City the decline was 17 percent; preliminary 1995 figures suggest a continuation of this trend. During 1994, robberies in New York fell to the lowest level since 1973. Felonies in the subway declined by an astounding 75 percent between 1990 and 1994.

Why does controlling disorder tend to reduce crime? According to Kelling and Coles, the broken-windows strategy yields information about criminals, sends a signal of zero tolerance to wrongdoers, gives individual citizens an effective way of taking responsibility, and catalyzes community mobilization on behalf of public order and safety. In other words, it helps citizens reclaim public spaces while it counteracts the atomization characteristic of 911-style policing. The new focus on public order produces not the vigilantism feared by civil libertarians but, rather, a new sense of optimism that civility and community can be restored.

Kelling and Coles are confident that the emphasis on restoring order contributes to reducing officially reported crimes. But even if it did not, they assert, it would still be a desirable strategy:

Disorder and the fear it generates are serious problems that warrant attention in and of themselves. Disorder demoralizes communities, undermines commerce, leads to the abandonment of public spaces, and undermines public confidence in the ability of government to solve problems; fear drives citizens further from each other and paralyzes their normal, order-sustaining responses, compounding the impact of disorder.