The Broken Windows Theory By Philip Zimbardo

An individual is a production of his or her environment and context and can their actions can be easily effected. The concept is brought up and examined in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Power of Context: The Rise and Fall of New York City Crime. The idea is shown in real examples in both Leslie Bell’s book Hard to Get: Twenty Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom and Jean Twenge An Army of One: Me. The concept that one is affected by his or her environment or context is a radical idea due to it going against the traditional concept that an individual is the product of their upbringing and past experiences. The Broken Windows Theory as stated in Gladwell's work gives an explanation as to why an individual can be a product of

The broken windows theory, originally pioneered by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling argues that a broken window is a sign that no one cares about the appearance of the property. This proverbial broken window in turn encourages other residents to neglect their property. This further sends the entire neighborhood into a downward spiral, we begin to see large amounts of litter scattered throughout the neighborhood, home owners move out, houses become vacant and left to deteriorate, rental properties begin to spring up, and single family homes are turned into multifamily homes. As the income of residents decreases so does the property value of the neighborhood, and gradually a criminal element begins to establish itself within the neighborhood.

The broken window theory is a form of law that stops serious and non violent crimes, which can be reduced crime in urban cities. This strict enforcement is to stop non violent crimes such as skipping school, graffiti, vandalism and not paying fair. This law was first introduced in New York City in 1980, ever since the level of crimes has dropped even violent crimes such as rape, murder has gone down. New York started seeing their results in the early 1990s, and 2000. George Kelling was the founder of the broken windows theory; he first stated in a magazine article that if a building has multiple broken

When looking at my time as a correctional security staff member for the first 17 years of my adult life, I can see some connections to between the penitentiary work environment to set the stage for fear of each person confined inside the fence at any time. I may get some bad feedback from my fellow students that work in other law enforcement areas of the criminal justice system, but correctional staff members are the only members of the criminal justice system that work hands-on in an environment with no protective gear other than the radio’s and keys that they are issues at the start of their shift and walk into a correctional housing unit to work alone with 30 to 100 criminal offenders every day (Farness, Bello, Livi, Barbieri, & Bubbiotti, 2016). When other law enforcement officers go on duty they usually have a wide array of weapons, both lethal and non-lethal, they are issued to attempt to protect themselves from violent members of society that they may come across during their shifts (Leino, Eskelinen, Summala, & Virtanen, 2011). When other law enforcement officers go on to duty they will know from working the stress what areas have high crime rates, high violence rates, and also what areas of town will be safer than other

During the pass few class discussion, we have talked about several topics including the broken windows theory, the epidemic curve, and if negative social epidemics undergo the same spreading process. We said that the broken windows theory is now outdated and would not successfully stop crime in ways that it used to. In today's world, it can even be scene as a harmful policing procedure, in that excessively ticking on small crimes can lead in some cases to racial discrimination. The following day, we discussed what the epidemic curve looks like, and where all of the key components go. After much debate, the general consensus was that the innovators start a trends, and then in order for that trent to take off a maven, salesmen, or connector

Social control theory and social learning theory are two theories that suggest why deviant behavior is chosen to be acted upon by some individuals and not others. Both take a different stance on the issue. Social control theory suggests people’s behavior is based on their bonds to society, if they have strong bonds to society they conform and if not they have a tendency to act out or become involved in criminal or deviant behavior. Social learning theory suggest that through vicarious learning people learn from observing others and based on what the observe make the choice of whether to copy those actions to obtain desired results or chose not to if

The broken windows thesis is a criminological concept that is based in older theories of social ecology, social disorganization, and situational crime prevention. It basically says that neighborhoods that show signs of decline or tolerate open criminal behavior, such as vandalism, prostitution, drug crime, vagrancy, etc. send a message to others that nobody cares about the neighborhood or nobody pays attention, and that more serious crimes will go unchallenged or unnoticed. Where it gets its name is from the reality that when you see an old abandoned building all the windows are broken and that is because once people broke one and nothing happened, the opportunity was there to break them all. The same rational applies to society.

According to criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, “… crime is the inevitable result of disorder.” (qtd. In Gladwell, paragraph 2). Wilson and Kelling are the masterminds behind The Broken Windows theory. The theory states that is a window is left unfixed after it is broken, people will come to the conclusion that there is no control. If that happens, more windows will be broken signifying that anything can happen. Dress code violations, mass shootings, and police brutality encounters are examples of broken windows.

As the public’s fear of drugs grew, so did the nation’s prisons. Currently, the United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners (13th). Throughout its decades in action, the war on drugs has led to new policing systems that are inherently discriminatory. These systems include the “broken windows theory” and “stop-and-frisk” tactics. The broken windows theory revolves around the idea that heavily monitoring urban areas to catch and stop small/minor crimes will deter more-serious, large scale crimes from occurring (“Why Baltimore Blew Up”).

In the early 1990’s New York City implemented a new method of policing called the “Broken Windows” theory. At that time William Bratton was the new commissioner of the New York City Police Department and he wanted to center his attention to the subways. Using this theory to help with policing meant that more serious crimes would evolve from the minor infractions. Bratton was basically causing a war with the fare evasion and the homeless in the subway tunnels. He was authorizing sweeps to make sure that the subway tunnels were safe for citizens. This was all stemmed from the broken windows theory that was introduced in an article from the 1982 Atlantic Monthly written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. (Maskaly & Boggess, 2014).

Beginning from a child we begin to experience different situations and interactions with others. We start getting taught the difference between right and wrong, what may be considered good and what is considered bad, and also taught the things we should and should not do. As we grow older we try to refrain from behavior of which society may disapprove of. Society see’s certain types of behavior as being deviant. First let’s begin by explaining what is a deviant behavior? Deviant behavior can be any behavior that does not conform to what people may consider normal, a behavior that does not meet with many expectations in society. Societies are both social structure and culture. Robert K Merton developed structural

In March 1982, The Atlantic magazine ran an article titled “Broken Windows” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. [1] The authors of this now famous article wrote, “Social psychologists and police officers agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” One broken window, left unrepaired, is a signal that the building is abandoned and that no one cares, so breaking more windows means nothing. The authors continue, “Vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers—the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility—are lowered by actions that seem to signal that ‘no one cares.’”

It focuses on the way of life of cities, such as their unemployment rates, financial instability, and lack of quality in education studies. It also states that the family and friends people involve themselves in their daily lives have a major impact on determining if individuals will commit a crime as a result of their social interactions with them. If an individual’s social influences are engaging in insensitive and delinquent behaviors, then that individual will commit crime because of their peer’s behaviors. Whereas, if an individual involves themselves with people who are positively involved in their communities and committed to good behaviors, then the individual will do the same. Because the social environment causes an individual to commit a crime, then the only way to stop crime is to remove the individual from the negative environment and expose them to good social environments in order to produce lawful behavior.

     Some causes for conduct in adolescents are no discipline, unstructured discipline and a broken home. A broken home is one of the factors that can produce a delinquent child. A broken home reduces the opportunity for creating a strong attachment between child and parents and that reduces the parent’s ability to condition the child. Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others.

The first factor that often leads to juvenile delinquency involves the child’s social influences within their communities. The community of individuals that a child is normally around on a normal basis includes family, friends, and neighbors. Depending on the overall quality of the relationship that the child has with each member of their community, they maybe more or less inclined to commit crimes. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, juveniles who experience abuse or neglect from any member of their community may be more inclined to become deviant (n.d.). For example, if a father abuses his child, the odds of the child’s willing to resort to deviance becomes significantly higher than a father who treats his son like a normal parent. Another way a child can be socially exposed to deviance is through example. If a parent is always in a run with law enforcement on a constant basis, that child may grow up to be just like them simply because that is how they were raised. The third and final social influence comes outside of the family circle where the actions that a child’s friends partake in can also determine whether or not the child will pursue acts of deviance. The influence of a friend’s actions can either be positive or negative depending on the values of the friend. For instance, say a child named Johnny hangs around a group of troublemakers who always wreck havoc, smoke joints, and talk trash about everyone. This kind of relationship between Johnny and his friends can lead Johnny to becoming just like the troublemakers because of peer pressure.