Broken windows theory

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the 1980s, New York was hell. More than 1,500 grave crimes were committed there every day: 6-7 murders a day. It was dangerous to walk the streets at night, and it was risky to ride the subway even during the day.

Burglars and beggars on the subway were commonplace. Dirty and damp platforms were barely lit. It was cold in the carriages, rubbish was lying underfoot, the walls and ceiling were covered with graffiti.

The city was in the grip of the most ferocious crime epidemic in its history. But then the inexplicable happened. Having reached a peak in 1990, crime declined sharply. Over the next few years, the number of homicides has decreased by 2/3, and the number of violent crimes - by half. By the end of the decade, 75% fewer crimes were committed in the metro than at the beginning. For some reason, tens of thousands of psychos and gopniks stopped breaking the law.

What happened? Who pressed the magic stop-tap and what kind of tap is it?

Its name is The Broken Windows Theory. Canadian sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, in Tipping Point, explains:

Broken Windows is the brainchild of forensic scientists Wilson and Kelling. They argued that crime is the inevitable result of a lack of order. If the window is broken and not glazed, then those passing by decide that no one cares and no one is responsible for anything. More windows will soon be broken, and the feeling of impunity will spread throughout the street, sending a signal to the entire neighborhood. A signal calling for more serious crimes."

Gladwell deals with social epidemics. He believes that a person breaks the law not only (and not even so much) because of bad heredity or improper upbringing. Of great importance to him is what he sees around him. Context.

Dutch sociologists confirm this idea. They conducted a series of interesting experiments. For example, this. Bins were removed from the bike parking near the store and flyers were hung on the bicycle handlebars. We began to observe how many people would throw flyers on the asphalt, and how many were ashamed. The wall of the store, next to which the bicycles are parked, was perfectly clean.

Leaflets were thrown to the ground by 33% of cyclists.

Then the experiment was repeated, having previously painted the wall with empty drawings.

69% of cyclists have already littered.

But back to New York in the era of wild crime. In the mid-1980s, the leadership of the New York subway changed. New director David Gunn started with … the fight against graffiti. It cannot be said that the entire city community was delighted with the idea. "Boy, take care of serious issues - technical problems, fire safety, crime … Don't waste our money on nonsense!" But Gunn was persistent:

“Graffiti is a symbol of the collapse of the system. If you begin the process of restructuring your organization, the first thing to do is to defeat graffiti. Without winning this battle, no reforms will take place. We are ready to introduce new trains worth $ 10 million each, but if we do not protect them from vandalism, we know what will happen. They will last one day, and then they will be mutilated."

And Gunn gave the command to clean the cars. Route by route. Composition by composition. Every damn carriage, every single day. “For us it was like a religious act,” he later said.

Washing stations were installed at the end of the routes. If the car came with graffiti on the walls, the drawings were washed off during the turn, otherwise the car was taken out of service altogether. Dirty wagons, from which the graffiti had not yet been washed off, were by no means mixed with clean ones. Gunn delivered a clear message to the vandals.

“We had a depot in Harlem where the cars were parked at night,” he said. “On the very first night, teenagers showed up and smeared the walls of the cars with white paint. The next night, when the paint dried, they came and drew the contours, and a day later they painted it all. That is, they worked for 3 nights. We waited for them to finish their "work". Then we took the rollers and painted over everything. The guys were upset to tears, but everything was painted over from top to bottom. This was our message for them: “Do you want to spend 3 nights disfiguring the train? Let's. But no one will see this "…

In 1990, William Bratton was hired as Chief of Transportation Police. Instead of getting down to serious business - grave crimes, he came to grips with … free riders. Why?

The new chief of police believed that, like the problem of graffiti, a huge number of "birds with one stone" could be a signal, an indicator of a lack of order. And this encouraged the commission of more serious crimes. At that time, 170 thousand passengers made their way to the metro for free. The teenagers simply jumped over the turnstiles or broke through by force. And if 2 or 3 people cheated the system, those around (who in other circumstances would not break the law) joined them. They decided that if someone didn't pay, they wouldn't either. The problem grew like a snowball.

What did Bratton do? He put 10 policemen in disguise at the turnstiles. They grabbed the rabbits one at a time, handcuffed them and lined them up on the platform. The free riders stood there until the "big catch" was over. After that, they were escorted to a police bus, where they were searched, fingerprinted and punched through the database. Many had weapons with them. Others had problems with the law.

“It became a real Eldorado for the cops,” Bratton said. “Each arrest was like a bag of popcorn with a surprise in it. What kind of toy am I getting now? Pistol? Knife? Do you have permission? Wow, there’s a murder for you!.. Pretty soon the bad guys grew wiser, they began to leave their weapons at home and pay the fare.”

In 1994, Rudolph Giuliani was elected mayor of New York. He took Bratton out of the transport department and put him in charge of the city's police force. By the way, Wikipedia says that it was Giuliani who first applied the Broken Windows Theory. We now know that this is not the case. Nevertheless, the merit of the mayor is undeniable - he gave the command to develop a strategy across the whole of New York.

The police have taken a fundamentally tough stance towards petty offenders. She arrested everyone who drank and raged in public places. Who threw empty bottles. I painted the walls. He jumped through the turnstiles, begged for money from drivers for cleaning windows. If someone urinated on the street, they would go straight to jail.

The urban crime rate began to plummet - as quickly as in the subway. Police Chief Bratton and Mayor Giuliani explain, "Seemingly petty and insignificant offenses served as a signal for serious crimes."

The chain reaction was stopped. By the end of the 1990s, crime-ridden New York had become the safest metropolis in America.

A clean-shod person carefully walks around the dirt, but once he stumbles, gets his shoes dirty, he is less wary, and when he sees that the shoes are all dirty, he boldly slaps in the mud, getting more and more dirty. Likewise, a person from a young age, while he is still clean of evil and depraved deeds, takes care and avoids everything bad, but it is worth making a mistake once or twice, and he thinks: beware, do not beware, everything will be the same, and indulges in all vices.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy