Broken Windows And Broken Police Forces
Broken Windows theory comes out of a James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling article in The Atlantic from March of 1982. In a nutshell:
Second, at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones....Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.
Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.
Ken White at Popehat lays the two side by side:
If tolerating broken windows leads to more broken windows and escalating crime, what impact does tolerating police misconduct have?Under the Broken Windows Theory, what impact could it have but to signal to all police that scorn for rights, unjustified violence, and discrimination are acceptable norms? Under Broken Windows Theory, what could be the result but more scorn, more violence, and more discrimination?
Apparently we've decided that we won't tolerate broken windows any more. But we haven't found the fortitude to do something about broken people. To put it plainly: just as neighborhood thugs could once break windows with impunity, police officers can generally kill with impunity.








Impunity?
You base this on how many cases?
Radwaste at December 10, 2014 6:09 AM
One is too many. There are many articles available (start with Reason Online and go from there).
Here in Montreal it's relatively quiet, but police still kill a couple people per year (usually homeless guys or bystanders -- last year or so, both at once!).
V-Man at December 10, 2014 7:45 AM
If tolerating broken windows leads to more broken windows and escalating crime, what impact does tolerating police misconduct have? Under the Broken Windows Theory, what impact could it have but to signal to all police that scorn for rights, unjustified violence, and discrimination are acceptable norms? Under Broken Windows Theory, what could be the result but more scorn, more violence, and more discrimination?
One could ask the same thing about torture reports.
Kevin at December 10, 2014 8:43 AM
Watched a bit of a group "dialog" on BBC decades ago.
The moderator took the group down a logical path of escalating consequences if a person in an alley was not shot.
Both extreme POVs were scary/funny.
The policeman and military guys were quick to believe the "radio report" and "shot" the guy fairly early (as soon as they believed the description absolutely matched the guy.
The hippie-looking liberal types never did "shoot" the guy and I thought a couple of them were going either cry or walk out as the "radio report" took them to the description of his pack which had a bomb in it and they had to explain why they would not shoot.
Bob in Texas at December 10, 2014 8:57 AM
Why can't both be true? And why do we either have to tolerate out of control police forces or out of control criminals? There is a middle ground.
Ben at December 10, 2014 9:39 AM
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