Police Relations

Broken Windows

James Q. Wibson and George L. Kelling

In the 1970’s New Jersey announced a “Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program,” this program was designed to improve the community in twenty-eight cities. A Major part of this program was to take the police from patrol cars to foot patrol. Even though this left foot patrol men at a disadvantage it reduced mobility, they also had trouble getting to calls fast enough, and during cold weather it reduced their chance at a “good pinch.” Some patrol men believe that foot patrol was used as punishment. Since the state of New Jersey was paying for foot patrol men everyone was willing to go along with it.

Five years after the program started the Police Foundation in Washington, DC made an evaluation of the foot patrol project. What concluded from this experiment was that, foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than people in other areas without foot patrol. Citizens living in the areas with foot patrol had a better perception of the police. Also, from this study it found that foot patrol has no effect on crime; it only fools the citizens into thinking that they are safer.

Kelling would spend many hours out with the patrol men; he wanted to see how the patrol maintains order. The particular neighborhood that Kelling would follow along with was in Newark, NJ, it was a run down city with many abandoned buildings. The major part of the city was the train station and the numerous bus stops that kept the town on its feet. The people on the streets were mainly black the officers were generally white. The people on the streets were made up of regulars and strangers. The strangers were thought to look suspicious.

For people that broke the informal rules they were arrested for vagrancy. When the rules were violated they turned to Kelly for help be the people also ridiculed the violators. What Kelly did was enforcing the law. But it involved taking steps to protect public order.

Philip Zimbaldo in 1969 did some experiments in testing the broken window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and in Palo Alto, California. Within ten minutes the car in the Bronx and family of a mother and son were first to arrive at the car in which they removed the radiator and the battery. With 24 hours the car was ripped apart. The Car in Palo Alto, California remained untouched for about a week. Zimbaldo than smashed a window out in the car, after which the car became turned over and dismantled. In both