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How The Broken Windows `` Theory Of Policing Played A Major Role?

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Kelling and Sousa (2001) try to answer with their research the question of whether police mattered in New York City during the intense crime-drop of the 1990s, particularly analyzing if the “broken windows” theory of policing played a major role. Firstly formulated by Wilson and Kelling in 1982, this idea suggests that disorder leads to destabilized neighborhoods by generating a sense of absence of effective social control, and thus leaving room for serious crime to arise. For them, maintaining the order would reduce neighborhood fear and eventually crime would decrease.
The research design proposed by the authors is to statistically compare the relation between the dependent variable “violent crime” and four explanatory variables: a measure of “broken windows” policing (misdemeanor offenses), a measure of demographics (young male enrolled in high school), a measure of drug use (hospital discharges for cocaine-related episodes) and a measure of economy (unemployment). They use data of seventy-six precincts of New York City from 1989 to 1998, obtained from a variety of official secondary sources.
The key idea of this study is that police can actually control crime. They find that “Broken Windows” policing (misdemeanor arrests) is substantially and consistently linked to the reduction of violent crime in precincts, while in general the other explanatory variables are not associated with this outcome. They conclude that, on average, every 28 misdemeanor arrests led to one

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