Posted on 03/04/2006 7:32:39 PM PST by tbird5
A crime-fighting theory that says stopping major crimes begins with stopping small ones has influenced policing strategies in Boston and elsewhere since the 1980s. But scholars are starting to question whether fixing broken windows really fixes much at all.
ON THURSDAY, Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced a new initiative. The Boston Police Department, he said, will be cracking down on misdemeanor offenses, including loud parties, unleashed dogs, public drinking, and even littering. ''Today we are addressing what may sometimes appear to be smaller issues," the mayor said at a press conference, ''but for those of us familiar with the 'broken windows' theory and reality, we know that these kinds of community disorder issues are the precursors to the violent crimes that may follow."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Daniel Brook. Head up ass as per usual.
It would be an amazing feat to be as intellectually bereft as Mumbles Menino. The crime rate in Boston has escalated now due to all of the stupid liberal Judges who gave hardened gang members 10-15 year sentences. They are out now, killing and procreating like crazy!!
Cannot WAIT to get out of this morally bankrupt hell on earth!
Gee whiz, trotting out ''Freakonomics," to make a case against "Broken Windows"
A liberal moon bat nightmare.
At least "Broken Windows" has an excellent track record of actually working.
At least the police aren't buying the lefty theories.
What proves the validity of the "broken window" method is how Rudy Giuliani drastically reduced crime in NYC. To cite just one minor but typical example. Many of the "homeless" and other street derelicts would force people to pay for such "services" as cleaning car windshields and making charity "donations". Previously such behaviour was ignored by law enforcement as simply "nuisance" activity. But Giuliani started arresting them and any others who were harassing the public. Guess what? Word quickly got around that there was a new mayor with a new policy called zero tolerance - and it worked on every level from the misdemeanors to the felonies!
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February 28, 2006, 10:15 a.m.
There Are No Cracks in the Broken Windows
Ideological academics are trying to undermine a perfectly good idea.
By William Bratton & George Kelling
We've argued for many years that when police pay attention to minor offenses — such as prostitution, graffiti, aggressive panhandling — they can reduce fear, strengthen communities, and prevent serious crime. One of us co-originated (with James Q. Wilson) this theory, which has come to be known as "fixing broken windows"; the other implemented it in New York City, first as chief of the transit police under Mayor David Dinkins, and then more broadly as police commissioner under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Yet despite the demonstrable success of this theory, some criminologists and sociologists continue to attack it, with arguments that are factually and philosophically false. Policymakers should not be misled by these misrepresentations into returning our cities to the failed police policies of the past.
According to a recent Boston Globe article by Daniel Brook, for instance, "scholars are starting to question whether fixing broken windows really fixes much at all." In fact, the theory always had its critics. Some were anti-police groups seizing any opportunity to detract from police achievements. Others were liberals who deeply resented Giuliani and his policies.
An early charge of these critics was that the police had to be "cooking the books." They abandoned this argument, though, as the homicide rate in New York City plunged, from 2,262 murders in 1990 to 629 in 1998; it's hard to hide that many bodies.
Others argued that crime reductions came with an unacceptable level of police harassment and brutality. This charge was not sustainable, either. Police shootings, and complaints against police, actually declined in New York City during the Giuliani years. In 1998, police shootings reached their lowest level since the 1970s, when data on police shootings was first recorded.
The most sustained attack on broken windows and NYPD achievements has not been practical or factual, but political and ideological. Many social scientists are wedded to the idea that crime is caused by the structural features of a capitalist society — especially economic injustice, racism, and poverty. They assume that true crime reduction can come only as the result of economic reform, redistribution of wealth, and elimination of poverty and racism.
Responding to such academic criticism is difficult when it claims support in "scientific" evidence. While challenges to their scientific research on the basis of research design, sampling methodology, data interpretation, or misrepresentation of theories can come across as academic quibbling, these elements of research lie at the core of the issue and determine the validity of conclusions reached.
Take the attacks of University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt. To debunk broken windows, Harcourt re-analyzed Northwestern University's Professor Wesley Skogan's Disorder and decline: Crime and the spiral of decay in American neighborhoods, originally presented in 1990. Skogan's original findings, however, supported the link between disorder and serious crime. To dispense with that inconvenience, Harcourt omitted from his analysis two neighborhoods with strong relationships between disorder and crime.
Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson and University of Michigan education professor Stephen Raudenbush, criticizing broken windows in The American Sociological Review, were similarly selective. To measure levels of disorder, they filmed neighborhoods systematically — but only between 7 A.M. and 7 P.M., when light was sufficient for their cameras. That's like looking for lost car keys under the lamppost because that's where the light is good, not because that's where the keys were lost. Missed in this approach were bar closings, early-morning drug sales, prostitution, and other forms of disorder that take place between dusk and dawn.
Sampson and Raudenbush also misrepresented the broken windows hypothesis. They claimed that broken windows posits a direct link between disorder and serious crime. From the first presentation of broken windows we have argued, to the contrary, that the link, while clear and strong, is indirect. Citizen fear, created by disorder, leads to weakened social controls, thus creating the conditions in which crime can flourish.
It's easy for academics to claim that they have "disproved" broken windows. It fits nicely into a sound bite. More carefully considered evaluations of the theory, which we welcome, require complex and subtle reasoning, less easily formulated for general readers. Nevertheless, this research is available to those who seek it out. Harvard researcher Anthony Braga, and others, have conducted policy studies in Jersey City, New Jersey, and in other areas, that support broken windows. The recent critics ignore their research.
What particularly galls police about these critiques is that ivory-tower academics — many of whom have never sat in a patrol car, walked or bicycled a beat, lived in or visited regularly troubled violent neighborhoods, or collected any relevant data of their own "on the ground" — cloak themselves in the mantle of an empirical "scientist" and produce "findings" indicating that broken windows has been disproved. Worse, they allege that police have had little to do with the declines in crime. Police don't have time for these virtual-reality theories; they do their work in the real world.
In Los Angeles, where Bratton has been chief since 2002, the LAPD has reduced crime by 26 percent overall, and homicides by 25 percent in three years, using many strategies, but always emphasizing order-restoration. These achievements in Los Angeles, like those in New York and in other cities, prove that broken windows is, in fact, thriving.
Fixing broken windows is not the panacea for all crime problems. But it's a proven base on which to build. Research suggests that citizens — especially minorities — appreciate it; it reduces fear; and it has an impact on serious crime.
— William J. Bratton, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, was chief of the New York City Transit Police from 1990 to 1991, and New York City police commissioner from 1994 to 1996. George Kelling is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a professor in the School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers Newark University.
The people who were arrested jumping turnstiles and panhandling were the same ones who weren't being caught for more serious crimes. Serious crime didn't drop because its perpetrators got the word, it dropped because its perpetrators were in jail.
This is a crock. When Bratten set up traps for farebeaters in the NYC Subway System, what happened. 1/3 of these scumbuckets were wanted on felonies. Many murderers were locked up because they got caught farebeating.
The other aspect of Bratten's program that doesn't get talked about at all is compstat. This was developed by the late Jack Maple. This involved using crime stats to figure out crime patterns and then allocate manpower accordingly or as Maple called it putting cops on the dots. If you see a bunch of armed robberies taking place on a certain street, station a cop there or some undercovers to take them down. Pretty simple, but until Bratten allowed Maple to do it, no one had ever thought of it.
Also getting rid of the squeegee scum made a big difference. They contributed to a feeling of lawlessness and a feeling that things were out of control. They intimidated motorists to extort contributions. This was a major accomplishment.
Anyone saying that this stuff doesn't work is a lefty enabler that believes that crime comes from intractable societal problems and that we should give out more welfare and methadone
Conclusion, these people love criminals and the underclass. They derive their power from this scum and is only too happy when crime increases.
Uh, so what about the exploding crime rate rises of the '60s and '70s? You can't blame crack for that. Remember, for example, the differences betwen the NYC blackouts of 1965 (no meaningful increase in criminal activity) and 1977 (full blown riots), a mere 12 years apart. Crack never came around until the early '80s.
But scholars are starting to question whether fixing broken windows really fixes much at all.
Scholars = People with Ph.D. who "fight crime" from the safety of their lecture halls.
Yep, first thing that I thought of, too. But see, that is exactly WHY scumbag Democrats like this author Daniel Brook and his ilk don't like the theory - - it is a REPUBLICAN theory that WORKS!
There is nothing the scumbag Democrats hate worse.
Regards,
LH
Focusing on the wrong misdemeanors, fool.
Here in New York the "Broken Windows" theory started in the subways. The cops started incarcerating fare jumpers, grafitti 'artists', indecent exposure, panhandling and the like, and began tracking these misdemeanor offenders as they went through the system.
Know what they found out?
These were scumbags comitting MAJOR FELONIES above ground, when they weren't lurking in the subways. They also found that the great majority of the bums were repeat offenders (both above and below ground).
Ticketing an inconsiderate dog walker doesn't ncecessarily mean you found yourself a drug dealer or axe murderer.
Cuff yourself a chronic subway urinator, however, and chances are, you've just nabbed yourself a car thief or a mugger.
Target the right windows. Otherwise, this doesn't work.
Nothing in this article addresses what I think is the major reason "broken window" policing is so effective. I think it works so well, not because it discourages the commission of more serious crimes in future, but because petty criminals have often committed more serious crimes in the past, or are in the process of doing so.
The thugs who jump turnstiles are also frequently the same ones who deal drugs, commit rapes, or burglarize buildings in the same neighborhood. They have a much higher likelihood of being in possession of drugs or being a wanted fugitive than the average man in the street.
Therefore, by stopping and searching litterbugs, jaywalkers, turnstile jumpers and other scofflaws, I submit that the police are in fact focusing their efforts where they are likely to do the most good.
But as the old saying has it, "word of mouth is the best salesman". All criminals spread the word among themselves. And some who were arrested on lesser offenses were soon found to have a "rap sheet" that involved more serious crimes. Most criminals are "street smart" and the word quickly got around that a new regime was in town.
I agree completely - and the best proof is that it worked!
A few days ago National Peoples Radio ran a puff piece on taggers and the mean policemen who try to catch them spraying graffiti on public and private property. Retro back to the urban art meme...betcha these smug reporters would have a different outlook if it was their Prius or Volvo getting trashed...any way allowing smaller crimes to go unpunished creates a petri dish for bigger crime.
Absolutely! Just as some Lefties excuse terrorist activity because of a "poor environment", "poverty", "frustration", and other such bull. By their theories - carried to their logical conclusion - nobody is RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING. The devil made me do it!
I think you're absolutely right! The criminal element under liberal Mayor John Lindsay in NYC had an open season. He hampered the police (and destroyed morale) by creating such things as the Civilian Review Board and always went out of his way to give criminals the benefit of the doubt because they were "underprivileged" and victims of social injustice. But your other point is well taken too. Giuliani had support even from the affluent because their penthouses on the upper west side were no longer safe. Suddenly it was in their back yard! It had reached the point where NOBODY felt secure! And the zero tolerance policy worked - for once even liberals had to be for law and order! But we all know they have short memories.
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