Demonizing police is one of the reasons we can't bring back Broken Windows policing
More than 40 years have passed since the publication of one of the most important public-policy essays ever written. Its title, "Broken Windows," captured the essence of a simple but deeply insightful idea: public order matters. "[I]f a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken," wrote the late authors, political scientist James Q. Wilson and longtime Manhattan Institute senior fellow George L. Kelling, in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic.
Visible signs of chaos were like warnings: you’re not safe here. If left unaddressed, the chaos made those areas more vulnerable to further disorder, including serious crime. "‘[U]ntended’ behavior," the authors maintained, "leads to the breakdown of community controls" and causes residents to "think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and ... modify their behavior accordingly." The areas where disorder festers become more "vulnerable to criminal invasion" than "places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls."
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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most. Adapted from City Journal.
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