Editing Broken windows theory (section)

===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>