Editing Broken windows theory (section)

==Criticism==
===Other factors===
Several studies have argued that many of the apparent successes of broken windows policing (such as New York City in the 1990s) were the result of other factors.<ref name= "Order Maintenance Reconsidered">{{Cite journal |last=Thacher |first=David |year=2004 |url=http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7152&context=jclc |title=Order Maintenance Reconsidered: Moving beyond Strong Causal Reasoning |format=PDF |journal=Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology |volume=94 |issue=2 |pages=381–414 |doi=10.2307/3491374 |jstor=3491374 |access-date=2016-01-15 |archive-date=2018-07-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180719120804/https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7152&context=jclc |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> They claim that the "broken windows theory" closely relates [[correlation]] with [[causality]]: reasoning prone to [[correlation does not imply causation|fallacy]]. David Thacher, assistant professor of public policy and urban planning at the [[University of Michigan]], stated in a 2004 paper:<ref name= "Order Maintenance Reconsidered" />
{{blockquote|[S]ocial science has not been kind to the broken windows theory. A number of scholars reanalyzed the initial studies that appeared to support it.... Others pressed forward with new, more sophisticated studies of the relationship between disorder and crime. The most prominent among them concluded that the relationship between disorder and serious crime is modest, and even that relationship is largely an artifact of more fundamental social forces.}}

C. R. Sridhar, in his article in the ''[[Economic and Political Weekly]]'', also challenges the theory behind broken windows policing and the idea that the policies of [[William Bratton]] and the [[New York Police Department]] was the cause of the decrease of crime rates in [[New York City]].<ref name="Sridhar 1841–43"/> The policy targeted people in areas with a significant amount of physical disorder and there appeared to be a causal relationship between the adoption of broken windows policing and the decrease in crime rate. Sridhar, however, discusses other trends (such as New York City's economic boom in the late 1990s) that created a "[[perfect storm]]" that contributed to the decrease of crime rate much more significantly than the application of the broken windows policy. Sridhar also compares this decrease in crime rate with other major cities that adopted various policies and determined that the broken windows policy is not as effective.

In a 2007 study called "Reefer Madness" in the journal ''Criminology and Public Policy'', Harcourt and Ludwig found further evidence confirming that [[regression toward the mean|mean reversion]] fully explained the changes in crime rates in the different precincts in New York in the 1990s.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Harcourt |first1=Bernard |last2=Ludwig |first2=Jens |s2cid=19165766 |year=2007 |title=Reefer Madness: Broken Windows Policing and Misdemeanor Marijuana Arrests in New York City, 1989–2000 |url=http://www3.law.columbia.edu/bharcourt/documents/marijuana-arrests.pdf |journal=Criminology and Public Policy |volume=6 |pages=165–182 |via=Columbia.edu |doi=10.1111/j.1745-9133.2007.00427.x |access-date=2017-01-27 |archive-date=2017-02-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202032740/http://www3.law.columbia.edu/bharcourt/documents/marijuana-arrests.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Further alternative explanations that have been put forward include the waning of the [[crack epidemic (United States)|crack epidemic]],<ref name="SLATE1">{{cite web |url=http://www.slate.com/id/2141424/ |last=Metcalf |first=Stephen |title=The Giuliani Presidency? A new documentary makes the case against the outsized mayor |access-date=2007-09-03 |date=2006-05-11 |website=Slate |archive-date=2007-09-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930230204/http://www.slate.com/id/2141424/ |url-status=live }}</ref> unrelated growth in the prison population by the [[Rockefeller drug laws]],<ref name ="SLATE1"/> and that the number of males from 16 to 24 was dropping regardless of the shape of the US [[population pyramid]].<ref name= "FREAK">{{cite book |last1=Levitt |first1=Steven D. |author1-link=Steven Levitt |first2=Stephen J |last2=Dubner |author2-link=Stephen J. Dubner |title=Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2005 |location=New York |isbn=978-0-06-073132-8 |title-link=Freakonomics}}</ref>

It has also been argued that rates of major crimes also dropped in many other US cities during the 1990s, both those that had adopted broken windows policing and those that had not.<ref>{{Citation |first=Bernard E |last=Harcourt |title=Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing |publisher=Harvard |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-674-01590-6}}.</ref> It is thought that this is due to the exposure of children to environmental lead, which leads to loss of impulse control and, when they reach young adulthood, criminal acts. There appears to be a correlation between a 25-year lag between the addition and removal of lead from paint and gasoline and rises and falls in murder arrests.<ref>[http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Lucifer_Curves_2-22-15.pdf Lucifer Curves] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150225100935/http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Lucifer_Curves_2-22-15.pdf |date=February 25, 2015 }}, Rick Nevin, 22 Feb 2015</ref><ref>[https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline America's Real Criminal Element: Lead] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140512040918/https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline |date=2014-05-12 }}, ''Mother Jones'', January/February 2013 Issue, Kevin Drum</ref>

In his book, Baltimore criminologist Ralph B. Taylor argues that fixing windows is only a partial and short-term solution. His data supports a materialist view: changes in physical decay, superficial social disorder, and racial composition do not lead to higher crime, but economic decline does. He contends that the example shows that real, long-term reductions in crime require that urban politicians, businesses, and community leaders work together to improve the economic fortunes of residents in high-crime areas.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ildPAAAAMAAJ |title=Breaking Away from Broken Windows: Baltimore Neighborhoods and the Nationwide Fight Against Crime, Grime, Fear, and Decline |isbn=9780813397580 |last1=Taylor |first1=Ralph B. |year=2001 |publisher=Westview Press}}</ref>

In 2015, Northeastern University assistant professor Daniel T. O'Brien criticised the broken theory model. Using his [[Big data|Big Data]] based research model, he argues that the broken window model fails to capture the origins of crime in a neighbourhood. He concludes that crime comes from the [[social dynamics]] of communities and private spaces and spills into public spaces.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.northeastern.edu/2015/09/03/new-research-challenges-broken-windows-theory-of-crime-prediction/ |title=New research challenges 'broken windows theory' of crime prediction |date=3 September 2015 |access-date=7 June 2022 |archive-date=13 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220813001858/https://news.northeastern.edu/2015/09/03/new-research-challenges-broken-windows-theory-of-crime-prediction/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Relationship between crime and disorder===
According to a study by [[Robert J. Sampson]] and [[Stephen Raudenbush]], the premise on which the theory operates, that social disorder and crime are connected as part of a causal chain, is faulty. They argue that a third factor, collective efficacy, "defined as cohesion among residents combined with shared expectations for the social control of public space," is the cause of varying crime rates observed in an altered neighborhood environment. They also argue that the relationship between public disorder and crime rate is weak.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sampson |first1=Robert J. |last2=Raudenbush |first2=Stephen W |title=Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods |journal=American Journal of Sociology |date=1 November 1999 |volume=105 |issue=3 |pages=603–51 |doi=10.1086/210356 |url=http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/NeighborhoodCrime.pdf |citeseerx=10.1.1.691.8356 |s2cid=35181155 |access-date=31 January 2018 |archive-date=21 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170921213132/http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/NeighborhoodCrime.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the winter 2006 edition of the ''[[University of Chicago Law Review]]'', [[Bernard Harcourt]] and Jens Ludwig looked at the later [[Department of Housing and Urban Development]] program that rehoused inner-city project tenants in New York into more-orderly neighborhoods.<ref name=HarcourtLudwig2006/> The broken windows theory would suggest that these tenants would commit less crime once moved because of the more stable conditions on the streets. However, Harcourt and Ludwig found that the tenants continued to commit crimes at the same rate. Another tack was taken by a 2010 study questioning the theory's legitimacy concerning the subjectivity of disorder as perceived by persons living in neighborhoods. It concentrated on whether citizens view disorder as separate from crime or identical to it. The study noted that crime cannot be the result of disorder if the two are identical, agreed that disorder provided evidence of "convergent validity" and concluded that broken windows theory misinterprets the relationship between disorder and crime.{{Sfn | Gau | Pratt | 2010}}

===Racial bias===
[[File:WN america arrest.jpg|thumb|Man being arrested]]
Broken windows policing has sometimes become associated with zealotry, which has led to critics suggesting that it encourages discriminatory behaviour. Some campaigns such as [[Black Lives Matter]] have called for an end to broken windows policing.<ref name="NYT_campaignzero">{{cite news |last1=Maloney |first1=Alli |title=When police turn violent, activists Brittany Packnett and Johnetta Elzie push back |url=http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/09/29/when-police-turn-violent-activists-brittany-packnett-and-johnetta-elzie-push-back/ |access-date=December 18, 2016 |agency=Women in the World |newspaper=The New York Times |date=September 29, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161219043331/http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/09/29/when-police-turn-violent-activists-brittany-packnett-and-johnetta-elzie-push-back/ |archive-date=December 19, 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2016, a [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]] report argued that it had led the [[Baltimore Police Department]] to discriminate against and alienate minority groups.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/us/baltimore-police-zero-tolerance-justice-department.html |title=In Baltimore Report, Justice Dept. Revives Doubts About Zero-Tolerance Policing |website=The New York Times |date=11 August 2016 |language=en |access-date=2021-05-05 |last1=Williams |first1=Timothy |last2=Goldstein |first2=Joseph |archive-date=2021-05-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210503161419/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/us/baltimore-police-zero-tolerance-justice-department.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

A central argument is that the term disorder is vague, and giving the police broad discretion to decide what disorder is will lead to discrimination. In [[Dorothy Roberts]]'s article, "Foreword: Race, Vagueness, and the Social Meaning of Order Maintenance and Policing", she says that the broken windows theory in practice leads to the criminalization of communities of color, who are typically disfranchised.<ref name="Golub">{{cite journal |last=Johnson |first=Bruce D. |author2=Golub, Andrew |author3=McCabe, James |title=The international implications of quality-of-life policing as practiced in New York City |journal=Police Practice and Research |date=1 February 2010 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=17–29 |doi=10.1080/15614260802586368 |pmc=2847857 |pmid=20368765}}</ref> She underscores the dangers of vaguely written ordinances that allow for law enforcers to determine who engages in disorderly acts, which, in turn, produces a racially skewed outcome in crime statistics.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Dorothy |title=Foreword: Race, Vagueness, and the Social Meaning of Order-Maintenance Policing |journal=The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology |date=Spring 1999 |volume=89 |issue=3 |series=3 |pages=775–836 |jstor=1144123 |doi=10.2307/1144123 |url=https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1588&context=faculty_scholarship |access-date=2019-09-24 |archive-date=2020-11-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201113164541/https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1588&context=faculty_scholarship |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Similarly, Gary Stewart wrote, "The central drawback of the approaches advanced by Wilson, Kelling, and Kennedy rests in their shared blindness to the potentially harmful impact of broad police discretion on minority communities."{{Sfn | Stewart | 1998}} According to Stewart, arguments for low-level police intervention, including the broken windows hypothesis, often act "as cover for [[racist]] behavior".{{Sfn | Stewart | 1998}}

The theory has also been criticized for its unsound methodology and its manipulation of racialized tropes. Specifically, Bench Ansfield has shown that in their 1982 article, Wilson and Kelling cited only one source to prove their central contention that disorder leads to crime: the Philip Zimbardo vandalism study (see Precursor Experiments above).<ref name="bench" />  But Wilson and Kelling misrepresented Zimbardo's procedure and conclusions, dispensing with Zimbardo's critique of inequality and community anonymity in favor of the oversimplified claim that one broken window gives rise to "a thousand broken windows". Ansfield argues that Wilson and Kelling used the image of the crisis-ridden 1970s Bronx to stoke fears that "all cities would go the way of the Bronx if they didn't embrace their new regime of policing."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Ansfield |first=Bench |title=How a 50-year-old study was misconstrued to create destructive broken-windows policing |language=en |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/ |access-date=2020-05-01 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=December 27, 2019 |archive-date=2020-05-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200517045140/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/27/how-year-old-study-was-misconstrued-create-destructive-broken-windows-policing/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Wilson and Kelling manipulated the Zimbardo experiment to avail themselves of the racialized symbolism found in the broken windows of the Bronx.<ref name="bench">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1353/aq.2020.0005 |title=The Broken Windows of the Bronx: Putting the Theory in Its Place |year=2020 |last1=Ansfield |first1=Bench |journal=American Quarterly |volume=72 |issue=1 |pages=103–127 |s2cid=216215841 |doi-access=}}</ref>

Robert J. Sampson argues that based on common misconceptions by the masses, it is implied that those who commit disorder and crime have a clear tie to groups suffering from financial instability and may be of minority status: "The use of racial context to encode disorder does not necessarily mean that people are racially prejudiced in the sense of personal hostility." He notes that residents make a clear implication of who they believe is causing the disruption, which has been termed as implicit bias.{{Sfn | Sampson | Raudenbush | 2004 | p = 320}} He further states that research conducted on implicit bias and stereotyping of cultures suggests that community members hold unrelenting beliefs of African Americans and other disadvantaged minority groups, associating them with crime, violence, disorder, welfare, and undesirability as neighbors.{{Sfn | Sampson | Raudenbush | 2004 | p = 320}} A later study indicated that this contradicted Wilson and Kelling's proposition that disorder is an exogenous construct that has independent effects on how people feel about their neighborhoods.{{Sfn | Gau | Pratt | 2010}}

In response, Kelling and Bratton have argued that broken windows policing does not discriminate against law-abiding communities of minority groups if implemented properly.<ref name="brattonkelling"/> They cited ''Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods'',<ref>{{Citation |first=Wesley G |last=Skogan |title=Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods |publisher=University of California Press |year=1990}}</ref> a study by Wesley Skogan at [[Northwestern University]]. The study, which surveyed 13,000 residents of large cities, concluded that different ethnic groups have similar ideas as to what they would consider to be "disorder".

Minority groups have tended to be targeted at higher rates by the Broken Windows style of policing. Broken Windows policies have been utilized more heavily in minority neighborhoods where low-income, poor infrastructure and social disorder were widespread, causing minority groups to perceive that they were being [[Racial profiling|racially profiled]] under Broken Windows policing.<ref name=FaganDavies2000/><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gau |first1=Jacinta M. |last2=Pratt |first2=Travis C. |date=2010-07-01 |title=Revisiting Broken Windows Theory: Examining the Sources of the Discriminant Validity of Perceived Disorder and Crime |journal=Journal of Criminal Justice |volume=38 |issue=4 |pages=758–766 |doi=10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2010.05.002 |issn=0047-2352}}</ref>

===Class bias===
[[File:Beskucnik Tkalca 280309.jpg|thumb|Homeless man talking with a police officer]]
A common criticism of broken windows policing is the argument that it criminalizes the poor and homeless. That is because the physical signs that characterize a neighborhood with the "disorder" that broken windows policing targets correlate with the socio-economic conditions of its inhabitants. Many of the acts that are considered legal but "disorderly" are often targeted in public settings and are not targeted when they are conducted in private. Therefore, those without access to a private space are frequently criminalized. Critics, such as [[Robert J. Sampson]] and [[Stephen Raudenbush]] of [[Harvard University]], see the application of the broken windows theory in policing as a war against the poor, as opposed to a war against more serious crimes.{{Sfn | Sampson | Raudenbush | 2004}} Since minority groups in most cities are more likely to be poorer than the rest of the population, a bias against the poor would be linked to a racial bias.<ref name="Golub"/>

According to Bruce D. Johnson, Andrew Golub, and James McCabe, applying the broken windows theory in policing and policymaking can result in development projects that decrease physical disorder but promote undesired [[gentrification]]. Often, when a city is so "improved" in this way, the development of an area can cause the cost of living to rise higher than residents can afford, which forces low-income people out of the area. As the space changes, the middle and upper classes, often white, begin to move into the area, resulting in the gentrification of urban, poor areas. The residents are affected negatively by such an application of the broken windows theory and end up evicted from their homes as if their presence indirectly contributed to the area's problem of "physical disorder".<ref name="Golub"/>

===Popular press===
In ''[[More Guns, Less Crime]]'' (2000), [[economist]] [[John Lott (political activist)|John Lott, Jr.]] examined the use of the broken windows approach as well as community- and [[problem-oriented policing]] programs in cities over 10,000 in population, over two decades. He found that the impacts of these policing policies were inconsistent across different types of crime. Lott's book has been [[More Guns, Less Crime#Opposition|subject to criticism]], while [[More Guns, Less Crime#Support|other groups support]] Lott's conclusions.

In the 2005 book ''[[Freakonomics]]'', coauthors [[Steven D. Levitt]] and [[Stephen J. Dubner]] confirm and question the notion that the broken windows theory was responsible for New York's drop in crime, saying "the pool of potential criminals had dramatically shrunk". Levitt had in the ''[[Quarterly Journal of Economics]]'' attributed that possibility to the legalization of abortion with ''[[Roe v. Wade]]'', which correlated with a decrease, one generation later, in the number of delinquents in the population at large.<ref name=DonohueLevitt2001>{{Cite journal |doi=10.1162/00335530151144050 |title=The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |volume=116 |issue=2 |pages=379–420 |year=2001 |last1=Donohue |first1=J. J. |last2=Levitt |first2=S. D. |url=http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf |ssrn=174508 |access-date=2012-06-04 |archive-date=2012-06-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120607014923/http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

In his 2012 book ''Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society'', [[Jim Manzi]] writes that of the randomized field trials conducted in criminology, only [[nuisance abatement]] per broken windows theory has been successfully replicated.<ref>{{Citation |last=Bailey |first=Ronald |title=The Science of Policy |publisher=The American Conservative |year=2012 |url=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-science-of-policy/ |access-date=2018-09-02 |archive-date=2018-09-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180903013323/https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-science-of-policy/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Manzi |first=Jim |year=2012 |title=Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society}}</ref>