The theory of broken windows

Misery attracts misery. Corruption attracts corruption. An interesting theory from the field of experimental psychology shows that people tend to behave according to the environment in which they act. A theory with various applications in the fight against crime.

The theory is based on the following observation: if a building has broken windows that are not quickly replaced, in a short time that building will have more and more broken windows, so that in the end it will be completely vandalised.

This idea also applies to other areas of public space, such as garbage on streets / sidewalks or between blocks of flats. As soon as the dirt starts to build up, people start throwing garbage with growing indifference. The theory is not common in Romania, this type of behavior being, of course, universal.

In fact, the theory of broken windows was born in an article written by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in March 1982, published in The Atlantic Monthly. One of the natural conclusions that emerges from the above is that a good strategy for preventing the inconvenience of vandalism of all kinds is to solve problems when they are insignificant. Thus, if you repair the broken glass, the others will not be broken, if you collect the garbage as soon as it appears, there will be no garbage bags thrown on the sidewalks, if you attack petty crime, you will reduce major crime and so on. The theory goes even further that man in an untidy environment, in which what is considered moral, ethical, or legal does not seem to be respected, tends to behave accordingly, immorally, illegally.

A series of experiments whose results were published in the journal Science (November 2008) by a group of researchers in the Netherlands have confirmed the commands of this theory.

The first experiment took place in a bicycle parking lot on two different alleys. On one alley the nearby walls were full of graffiti, on the other alley the walls were freshly painted. Bicycles were advertised for a non-existent store. There were no trash cans in the area. It was found that 69% of those who had their bikes in the graffiti area threw the advertising material on the floor, while only 33% of those in the freshly painted area did so.

Another experiment refers to the more pronounced tendency of man to steal when he is in a wilder environment. A $ 6 envelope, clearly visible on the envelope, was left in a mailbox. When the box was clean and the area around the box was civilized, 13% of passers-by took the money. When the box was soiled with graffiti, 27% stole the money. When the box was clean, but garbage was dumped in the area, 25% of those who passed the box put the envelope in their pocket.

The story of broken windows is a story of our fascination with easy fixes and seductive theories. Once an idea like that takes hold, it's nearly impossible to get the genie back in the bottle.

Bernard Harcourt says about the theory of the broken window that: "It's a simple story that people can latch onto and that is a lot more pleasant to live with than the complexities of life. The fact is that crime dropped in America dramatically from the 1990s, and that there aren't really good, clean nationwide explanations for it."

Kelling says: "It's to the point now where I wonder if we should back away from the metaphor of broken windows. We didn't know how powerful it was going to be. It simplified, it was easy to communicate, a lot of people got it as a result of the metaphor. It was attractive for a long time. But as you know, metaphors can wear out and become stale."

These days, the consensus among social scientists is that broken windows likely did have modest effects on crime. But few believe it caused the 60 or 70 percent decline in violent crime for which it was once credited.