broken window thesis

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broken windows thesis

Quick reference.

A thesis which links disorderly behaviour to fear of crime, the potential for serious crime, and to urban decay in American cities. It is often cited as an example of communitarian ideas informing public policy.

In 1982 political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Kelling published an article under the title ‘Broken Windows’, arguing that policing in neighbourhoods should be based on a clear understanding of the connection between order-maintenance and crime prevention. In their view the best way to fight crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it. They used the image of broken windows to explain how neighbourhoods might decay into disorder and crime if no one attends to their maintenance: a broken factory window suggests to passers-by that no one is in Charge or cares; in time a few more windows are broken by rock-throwing youths; passers-by begin to think that no one cares about the whole street; soon, only the young and criminals are prepared to use the street; which then attracts prostitution, drug-dealing, and such like; until, in due course, someone is murdered. In this way, small disorders lead to larger disorders, and eventually to serious crimes.

This analysis implies that if disorderly behaviours in public places (including all forms of petty vandalism, begging, vagrancy, and so forth) are controlled then a significant drop in serious crime will follow. Wilson and Kelling therefore argue in favour of ‘community policing’ in neighbourhoods. This means many more officers on foot-patrol and fewer in police cars responding to emergency calls. Law enforcement should be a technique for crime prevention rather than a vehicle for reacting to crime.

These ideas were taken up by the New York Transit Authority, which adopted a policy of zero tolerance towards graffiti on trains, urinating in public, intimidation of commuters, and such like, and dramatically reduced the incidence of serious crime in New York City subways. Similar initiatives have also achieved notable successes in reducing crime-rates and urban decay in many other American cities. Typically these involve some mixture of Neighbourhood Watch programmes, zero tolerance of minor public disorders, a shift towards ‘community-oriented’ (preventive) and away from ‘incident-oriented’ (reactive) policing, police involvement in local youth projects, decentralization of authority to individual police officers, and community involvement in setting priorities for and collaborating with prosecutors, police, probation officers, and other criminal justice officials (see George Kelling and Catherine Coles, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in our Communities, 1996). See also criminology.

From: broken windows thesis in A Dictionary of Sociology »

Subjects: Social sciences — Sociology

Broken Windows Theory of Criminology

Charlotte Ruhl

Research Assistant & Psychology Graduate

BA (Hons) Psychology, Harvard University

Charlotte Ruhl, a psychology graduate from Harvard College, boasts over six years of research experience in clinical and social psychology. During her tenure at Harvard, she contributed to the Decision Science Lab, administering numerous studies in behavioral economics and social psychology.

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Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

The Broken Windows Theory of Criminology suggests that visible signs of disorder and neglect, such as broken windows or graffiti, can encourage further crime and anti-social behavior in an area, as they signal a lack of order and law enforcement.

Key Takeaways

The Broken Windows theory, first studied by Philip Zimbardo and introduced by George Kelling and James Wilson, holds that visible indicators of disorder, such as vandalism, loitering, and broken windows, invite criminal activity and should be prosecuted.
This form of policing has been tested in several real-world settings. It was heavily enforced in the mid-1990s under New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Netherlands later experimented with this theory.
Although initial research proved to be promising, this theory has been met with several criticisms. Specifically, many scholars point to the fact that there is no clear causal relationship between lack of order and crime. Rather, crime going down when order goes up is merely a coincidental correlation.
Additionally, this theory has opened the doors for racial and class bias, especially in the form of stop and frisk.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. In 2016, 2.3 million people were incarcerated, despite a massive decline in both violent and property crimes (Morgan & Kena, 2019).

These statistics provide some insight into why crime regulation and mass incarceration are such hot topics today, and many scholars, lawyers, and politicians have devised theories and strategies to try to promote safety within society.

One such model is broken windows policing, which was first brought to light by American psychologist Philip Zimbardo (famous for his Stanford Prison Experiment) and further publicized by James Wilson and George Kelling. Since its inception, this theory has been both widely used and widely criticized.

What Is the Broken Windows Theory?

The broken windows theory states that any visible signs of crime and civil disorder, such as broken windows (hence, the name of the theory), vandalism, loitering, public drinking, jaywalking, and transportation fare evasion, create an urban environment that promotes even more crime and disorder (Wilson & Kelling, 1982).

As such, policing these misdemeanors will help create an ordered and lawful society in which all citizens feel safe and crime rates, including violent crime rates, are low.

Broken windows policing tries to regulate low-level crime to prevent widespread disorder from occurring. If these small crimes are greatly reduced, then neighborhoods will appear to be more cared for.

The hope is that if these visible displays of disorder and neglect are reduced, violent crimes might go down too, leading to an overall reduction in crime and an increase in public safety.

Source: Hinkle, J. C., & Weisburd, D. (2008). The irony of broken windows policing: A micro-place study of the relationship between disorder, focused police crackdowns and fear of crime. Journal of Criminal Justice, 36(6), 503-512.

Academics justify broken windows policing from a theoretical standpoint because of three specific factors that help explain why the state of the urban environment might affect crime levels:

social norms and conformity;
the presence or lack of routine monitoring;
social signaling and signal crime.

In a typical urban environment, social norms and monitoring are not clearly known. As a result, individuals will look for certain signs and signals that provide both insight into the social norms of the area as well as the risk of getting caught violating those norms.

Those who support the broken windows theory argue that one of those signals is the area’s general appearance. In other words, an ordered environment, one that is safe and has very little lawlessness, sends the message that this neighborhood is routinely monitored and criminal acts are not tolerated.

On the other hand, a disordered environment, one that is not as safe and contains visible acts of lawlessness (such as broken windows, graffiti, and litter), sends the message that this neighborhood is not routinely monitored and individuals would be much more likely to get away with committing a crime.

With a decreased likelihood of detection, individuals would be much more inclined to engage in criminal behavior, both violent and nonviolent, in this type of area.

As you might be able to tell, a major assumption that this theory makes is that an environment’s landscape communicates to its residents in some way.

For example, proponents of this theory would argue that a broken window signals to potential criminals that a community is unable to defend itself against an uptick in criminal activity. It is not the literal broken window that is a direct cause for concern, but more so the figurative meaning that is ascribed to this situation.

It symbolizes a vulnerable and disjointed community that cannot handle crime – opening the doors to all kinds of unwanted activity to occur.

In neighborhoods that do have a strong sense of social cohesion among their residents, these broken windows are fixed (both literally and figuratively), giving these areas a sense of control over their communities.

By fixing these windows, undesired individuals and behaviors are removed, allowing civilians to feel safer (Herbert & Brown, 2006).

However, in environments in which these broken windows are left unfixed, residents no longer see their communities as tight-knit, safe spaces and will avoid spending time in communal spaces (in parks, at local stores, on the street blocks) so as to avoid violent attacks from strangers.

Additionally, when these broken windows are not fixed, it also symbolizes a lack of informal social control. Informal social control refers to the actions that regulate behavior, such as conforming to social norms and intervening as a bystander when a crime is committed, that are independent of the law.

Informal social control is important to help reduce unruly behavior. Scholars argue that, under certain circumstances, informal social control is more effective than laws.

And some will even go so far as to say that nonresidential spaces, such as corner stores and businesses, have a responsibility to actually maintain this informal social control by way of constant surveillance and supervision.

One such scholar is Jane Jacobs, a Canadian-American author and journalist who believed sidewalks were a crucial vehicle for promoting public safety.

Jacobs can be considered one of the original pioneers of the broken windows theory. One of her most famous books, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, describes how local businesses and stores provide a necessary sense of having “eyes on the street,” which promotes safety and helps to regulate crime (Jacobs, 1961).

Although the idea that community involvement, from both residents and non-residents, can make a big difference in how safe a neighborhood is perceived to be, Wilson and Keeling argue that the police are the key to maintaining order.

As major proponents of broken windows policing, they hold that formal social control, in addition to informal social control, is crucial for actually regulating crime.

Although different people have different approaches to the implementation of broken windows (i.e., cleaning up the environment and informal social control vs. an increase in policing misdemeanor crimes), the end goal is the same: crime reduction.

This idea, which largely serves as the backbone of the broken windows theory, was first introduced by Philip Zimbardo.

Examples of Broken Windows Policing

1969: philip zimbardo’s introduction of broken windows in nyc and la.

In 1969, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo ran a social experiment in which he abandoned two cars that had no license plates and the hoods up in very different locations.

The first was a predominantly poor, high-crime neighborhood in the Bronx, and the second was a fairly affluent area of Palo Alto, California. He then observed two very different outcomes.

James-And-Karla-Murray-NYC-Untapped-Cities

After just ten minutes, the car in the Bronx was attacked and vandalized. A family first approached the vehicle and removed the radiator and battery. Within the first twenty-four hours after Zimbardo left the car, everything valuable had been stripped and removed from the car.

Afterward, random acts of destruction began – the windows were smashed, seats were ripped up, and the car began to serve as a playground for children in the community.

On the contrary, the car that was left in Palo Alto remained untouched for more than a week before Zimbardo eventually went up to it and smashed the vehicle with a sledgehammer.

Only after he had done this did other people join the destruction of the car (Zimbardo, 1969). Zimbardo concluded that something that is clearly abandoned and neglected can become a target for vandalism.

But Kelling and Wilson extended this finding when they introduced the concept of broken windows policing in the early 1980s.

This initial study cascaded into a body of research and policy that demonstrated how in areas such as the Bronx, where theft, destruction, and abandonment are more common, vandalism would occur much faster because there are no opposing forces to this type of behavior.

As a result, such forces, primarily the police, are needed to intervene and reduce these types of behavior and remove such indicators of disorder.

1982: Kelling and Wilson’s Follow-Up Article

Thirteen years after Zimbardo’s study was published, criminologists George Kelling and James Wilson published an article in The Atlantic that applied Zimbardo’s findings to entire communities.

Kelling argues that Zimbardo’s findings were not unique to the Bronx and Palo Alto areas. Rather, he claims that, regardless of the neighborhood, a ripple effect can occur once disorder begins as things get extremely out of hand and control becomes increasingly hard to maintain.

The article introduces the broader idea that now lies at the heart of the broken windows theory: a broken window, or other signs of disorder, such as loitering, graffiti, litter, or drug use, can send the message that a neighborhood is uncared for, sending an open invitation for crime to continue to occur, even violent crimes.

The solution, according to Kelling and Wilson and many other proponents of this theory, is to target these very low-level crimes, restore order to the neighborhood, and prevent more violent crimes from happening.

A strengthened and ordered community is equipped to fight and deter crime (because a sense of order creates the perception that crimes go easily detected). As such, it is necessary for police departments to focus on cleaning up the streets as opposed to putting all of their energy into fighting high-level crimes.

In addition to Zimbardo’s 1969 study, Kelling and Wilson’s article was also largely inspired by New Jersey’s “Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program” that was implemented in the mid-1970s.

As part of the program, police officers were taken out of their patrol cars and were asked to patrol on foot. The aim of this approach was to make citizens feel more secure in their neighborhoods.

Although crime was not reduced as a result, residents took fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (such as locking their doors). Reducing fear is a huge goal of broken-windows policing.

As Kelling and Wilson state in their article, the fear of being bothered by disorderly people (such as drunks, rowdy teens, or loiterers) is enough to motivate them to withdraw from the community.

But if we can find a way to make people feel less fear (namely by reducing low-level crimes), then they will be more involved in their communities, creating a higher degree of informal social control and deterring all forms of criminal activity.

Although Kelling and Wilson’s article was largely theoretical, the practice of broken windows policing was implemented in the early 1990s under New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And Kelling himself was there to play a crucial role.

Early 1990s: Bratton and Giuliani’s implementation in NYC

In 1985, the New York City Transit Authority hired George Kelling as a consultant, and he was also later hired by both the Boston and Los Angeles police departments to provide advice on the most effective method for policing (Fagan & Davies, 2000).

Five years later, in 1990, William J. Bratton became the head of the New York City Transit Police. In his role, Bratton cracked down on fare evasion and implemented faster methods to process those who were arrested.

He attributed a lot of his decisions as head of the transit police to Kelling’s work. Bratton was just the first to begin to implement such measures, but once Rudy Giuliani was elected as mayor in 1993, tactics to reduce crime began to really take off (Vedantam et al., 2016).

Together, Giuliani and Bratton first focused on cleaning up the subway system, where Bratton’s area of expertise lay. They sent hundreds of police officers into subway stations throughout the city to catch anyone who was jumping the turnstiles and evading the fair.

And this was just the beginning.

All throughout the 90s, Giuliani increased misdemeanor arrests in all pockets of the city. They arrested numerous people for smoking marijuana in public, spraying graffiti on walls, selling cigarettes, and they shut down many of the city’s night spots for illegal dancing.

Conveniently, during this time, crime was also falling in the city and the murder rate was rapidly decreasing, earning Giuliani re-election in 1997 (Vedantam et al., 2016).

To further support the outpouring success of this new approach to regulating crime, George Kelling ran a follow-up study on the efficacy of broken windows policing and found that in neighborhoods where there was a stark increase in misdemeanor arrests (evidence of broken windows policing), there was also a sharp decline in crime (Kelling & Sousa, 2001).

Because this seemed like an incredibly successful mode, cities around the world began to adopt this approach.

Late 1990s: Albuquerque’s Safe Streets Program

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, a Safe Streets Program was implemented to deter and reduce unsafe driving and crime rates by increasing surveillance in these areas.

Specifically, the traffic enforcement program influenced saturation patrols (that operated over a large geographic area), sobriety checkpoints, follow-up patrols, and freeway speed enforcement.

The effectiveness of this program was analyzed in a study done by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Stuser, 2001).

Results demonstrated that both Part I crimes, including homicide, forcible rape, robbery, and theft, and Part II crimes, such as sex offenses, kidnapping, stolen property, and fraud, experienced a total decline of 5% during the 1996-1997 calendar year in which this program was implemented.

Additionally, this program resulted in a 9% decline in both robbery and burglary, a 10% decline in assault, a 17% decline in kidnapping, a 29% decline in homicide, and a 36% decline in arson.

With these promising statistics came a 14% increase in arrests. Thus, the researchers concluded that traffic enforcement programs can deter criminal activity. This approach was initially inspired by both Zimbardo’s and Kelling and Wilson’s work on broken windows and provides evidence that when policing and surveillance increase, crime rates go down.

2005: Lowell, Massachusetts

Back on the east coast, Harvard University and Suffolk University researchers worked with local police officers to pinpoint 34 different crime hotspots in Lowell, Massachusetts. In half of these areas, local police officers and authorities cleaned up trash from the streets, fixed streetlights, expanded aid for the homeless, and made more misdemeanor arrests.

There was no change made in the other half of the areas (Johnson, 2009).

The researchers found that in areas in which police service was changed, there was a 20% reduction in calls to the police. And because the researchers implemented different ways of changing the city’s landscape, from cleaning the physical environment to increasing arrests, they were able to compare the effectiveness of these various approaches.

Although many proponents of the broken windows theory argue that increasing policing and arrests is the solution to reducing crime, as the previous study in Albuquerque illustrates. Others insist that more arrests do not solve the problem but rather changing the physical landscape should be the desired means to an end.

And this is exactly what Brenda Bond of Suffolk University and Anthony Braga of Harvard Kennedy’s School of Government found. Cleaning up the physical environment was revealed to be very effective, misdemeanor arrests were less so, and increasing social services had no impact.

This study provided strong evidence for the effectiveness of the broken windows theory in reducing crime by decreasing disorder, specifically in the context of cleaning up the physical and visible neighborhood (Braga & Bond, 2008).

2007: Netherlands

The United States is not the only country that sought to implement the broken windows ideology. Beginning in 2007, researchers from the University of Groningen ran several studies that looked at whether existing visible disorder increased crimes such as theft and littering.

Similar to the Lowell experiment, where half of the areas were ordered and the other half disorders, Keizer and colleagues arranged several urban areas in two different ways at two different times. In one condition, the area was ordered, with an absence of graffiti and littering, but in the other condition, there was visible evidence for disorder.

The team found that in disorderly environments, people were much more likely to litter, take shortcuts through a fenced-off area, and take an envelope out of an open mailbox that was clearly labeled to contain five Euros (Keizer et al., 2008).

This study provides additional support for the effect perceived order can have on the likelihood of criminal activity. But this broken windows theory is not restricted to the criminal legal setting.

2008: Tokyo, Japan

The local government of Adachi Ward, Tokyo, which once had Tokyo’s highest crime rates, introduced the “Beautiful Windows Movement” in 2008 (Hino & Chronopoulos, 2021).

The intervention was twofold. The program, on one hand, drawing on the broken windows theory, promoted policing to prevent minor crimes and disorder. On the other hand, in partnership with citizen volunteers, the authorities launched a project to make Adachi Ward literally beautiful.

Following 11 years of implementation, the reduction in crime was undeniable. Felony had dropped from 122 in 2008 to 35 in 2019, burglary from 104 to 24, and bicycle theft from 93 to 45.

This Japanese case study seemed to further highlight the advantages associated with translating the broken widow theory into both aggressive policing and landscape altering.

Other Domains Relevant to Broken Windows

There are several other fields in which the broken windows theory is implicated. The first is real estate. Broken windows (and other similar signs of disorder) can indicate low real estate value, thus deterring investors (Hunt, 2015).

As such, some recommend that the real estate industry adopt the broken windows theory to increase value in an apartment, house, or even an entire neighborhood. They might increase in value by fixing windows and cleaning up the area (Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006).

Consequently, this might lead to gentrification – the process by which poorer urban landscapes are changed as wealthier individuals move in.

Although many would argue that this might help the economy and provide a safe area for people to live, this often displaces low-income families and prevents them from moving into areas they previously could not afford.

This is a very salient topic in the United States as many areas are becoming gentrified, and regardless of whether you support this process, it is important to understand how the real estate industry is directly connected to the broken windows theory.

Another area that broken windows are related to is education. Here, the broken windows theory is used to promote order in the classroom. In this setting, the students replace those who engage in criminal activity.

The idea is that students are signaled by disorder or others breaking classroom rules and take this as an open invitation to further contribute to the disorder.

As such, many schools rely on strict regulations such as punishing curse words and speaking out of turn, forcing strict dress and behavioral codes, and enforcing specific classroom etiquette.

Similar to the previous studies, from 2004 to 2006, Stephen Plank and colleagues conducted a study that measured the relationship between the physical appearance of mid-Atlantic schools and student behavior.

They determined that variables such as fear, social order, and informal social control were statistically significantly associated with the physical conditions of the school setting.

Thus, the researchers urged educators to tend to the school’s physical appearance to help promote a productive classroom environment in which students are less likely to propagate disordered behavior (Plank et al., 2009).

Despite there being a large body of research that seems to support the broken windows theory, this theory does not come without its stark criticisms, especially in the past few years.

Major Criticisms

At the turn of the 21st century, the rhetoric surrounding broken windows drastically shifted from praise to criticism. Scholars scrutinized conclusions that were drawn, questioned empirical methodologies, and feared that this theory was morphing into a vehicle for discrimination.

Misinterpreting the Relationship Between Disorder and Crime

A major criticism of this theory argues that it misinterprets the relationship between disorder and crime by drawing a causal chain between the two.

Instead, some researchers argue that a third factor, collective efficacy, or the cohesion among residents combined with shared expectations for the social control of public space, is the causal agent explaining crime rates (Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999).

A 2019 meta-analysis that looked at 300 studies revealed that disorder in a neighborhood does not directly cause its residents to commit more crimes (O’Brien et al., 2019).

The researchers examined studies that tested to what extent disorder led people to commit crimes, made them feel more fearful of crime in their neighborhoods, and affected their perceptions of their neighborhoods.

In addition to drawing out several methodological flaws in the hundreds of studies that were included in the analysis, O’Brien and colleagues found no evidence that the disorder and crime are causally linked.

Similarly, in 2003, David Thatcher published a paper in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology arguing that broken windows policing was not as effective as it appeared to be on the surface.

Crime rates dropping in areas such as New York City were not a direct result of this new law enforcement tactic. Those who believed this were simply conflating correlation and causality.

Rather, Thatcher claims, lower crime rates were the result of various other factors, none of which fell into the category of ramping up misdemeanor arrests (Thatcher, 2003).

In terms of the specific factors that were actually playing a role in the decrease in crime, some scholars point to the waning of the cocaine epidemic and strict enforcement of the Rockefeller drug laws that contributed to lower crime rates (Metcalf, 2006).

Other explanations include trends such as New York City’s economic boom in the late 1990s that helped directly contribute to the decrease of crime much more so than enacting the broken windows policy (Sridhar, 2006).

Additionally, cities that did not implement broken windows also saw a decrease in crime (Harcourt, 2009), and similarly, crime rates weren’t decreasing in other cities that adopted the broken windows policy (Sridhar, 2006).

Specifically, Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig examined the Department of Housing and Urban Development program that placed inner-city project residents into housing in more orderly neighborhoods.

Contrary to the broken windows theory, which would predict that these tenants would now commit fewer crimes once relocated into more ordered neighborhoods, they found that these individuals continued to commit crimes at the same rate.

This study provides clear evidence why broken windows may not be the causal agent in crime reduction (Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006).

Falsely Assuming Why Crimes Are Committed

The broken windows theory also assumes that in more orderly neighborhoods, there is more informal social control. As a result, people understand that there is a greater likelihood of being caught committing a crime, so they shy away from engaging in such activity.

However, people don’t only commit crimes because of the perceived likelihood of detection. Rather, many individuals who commit crimes do so because of factors unrelated to or without considering the repercussions.

Poverty, social pressure, mental illness, and more are often driving factors that help explain why a person might commit a crime, especially a misdemeanor such as theft or loitering.

Resulting in Racial and Class Bias

One of the leading criticisms of the broken windows theory is that it leads to both racial and class bias. By giving the police broad discretion to define disorder and determine who engages in disorderly acts allows them to freely criminalize communities of color and groups that are socioeconomically disadvantaged (Roberts, 1998).

For example, Sampson and Raudenbush found that in two neighborhoods with equal amounts of graffiti and litter, people saw more disorder in neighborhoods with more African Americans.

The researchers found that individuals associate African Americans and other minority groups with concepts of crime and disorder more so than their white counterparts (Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004).

This can lead to unfair policing in areas that are predominantly people of color. In addition, those who suffer from financial instability and may be of minority status are more likely to commit crimes in the first place.

Thus, they are simply being punished for being poor as opposed to being given resources to assist them. Further, many acts that are actually legal but are deemed disorderly by police officers are targeted in public settings but aren’t targeted when the same acts are conducted in private settings.

As a result, those who don’t have access to private spaces, such as homeless people, are unnecessarily criminalized.

It follows then that by policing these small misdemeanors, or oftentimes actions that aren’t even crimes at all, police departments are fighting poverty crimes as opposed to fighting to provide individuals with the resources that will make crime no longer a necessity.

Morphing into Stop and Frisk

Stop and frisk, a brief non-intrusive police stop of a suspect is an extremely controversial approach to policing. But critics of the broken windows theory argue that it has morphed into this program.

With broken-windows policing, officers have too much discretion when determining who is engaging in criminal activity and will search people for drugs and weapons without probable cause.

However, this method is highly unsuccessful. In 2008, the police made nearly 250,000 stops in New York, but only one-fifteenth of one percent of those stops resulted in finding a gun (Vedantam et al., 2016).

And three years later, in 2011, more than 685,000 people were stopped in New York. Of those, nine out of ten were found to be completely innocent (Dunn & Shames, 2020).

Thus, not only does this give officers free reins to stop and frisk minority populations at disproportionately high levels, but it also is not effective in drawing out crime.

Although broken windows policing might seem effective from a theoretical perspective, major valid criticisms put the practical application of this theory into question.

Given its controversial nature, broken windows policing is not explicitly used today to regulate crime in most major cities. However, there are still traces of this theory that remain.

Cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, are heavily policed and the city issues thousands of warrants a year on broken window types of crimes – from parking infractions to traffic violations.

And the racial and class biases that result from such an approach to law enforcement have definitely not disappeared.

Crime regulation is not easy, but the broken windows theory provides an approach to reducing offenses and maintaining order in society.

What is the broken glass principle?

The broken glass principle, also known as the Broken Windows Theory, posits that visible signs of disorder, like broken glass, can foster further crime and anti-social behavior by signaling a lack of regulation and community care in an area.

How does social context affect crime according to the broken windows theory?

The Broken Windows Theory proposes that the social context, specifically visible signs of disorder like vandalism or littering, can encourage further crime.

It suggests that these signs indicate a lack of community control and care, which can foster a climate of disregard for laws and social norms, leading to more severe crimes over time.

How did broken windows theory change policing?

The Broken Windows Theory influenced policing by promoting proactive attention to minor crimes and maintaining urban environments.

It led to strategies like “zero-tolerance” or “quality-of-life” policing, focusing on reducing visible signs of disorder to prevent more serious crime.

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Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982). Broken windows. Atlantic monthly, 249 (3), 29-38.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska press.

Further Information

Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982). Broken windows. Atlantic monthly, 249(3), 29-38.
Fagan, J., & Davies, G. (2000). Street stops and broken windows: Terry, race, and disorder in New York City. Fordham Urb. LJ, 28, 457.
Fagan, J. A., Geller, A., Davies, G., & West, V. (2010). Street stops and broken windows revisited. In Race, ethnicity, and policing (pp. 309-348). New York University Press.

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Broken Windows Theory

Last updated 2 Apr 2018

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James Q. Wilson concluded that the extent to which a community regulates itself has a dramatic impact on crime and deviance. The "broken windows" referred to in the theory’s name is the idea that where there is one broken window left unreplaced there will be many.

A broken window is a physical symbol that the residents of a particular neighbourhood do not especially care about their environment and that low-level deviance is tolerated. The theory influenced policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic and, most famously, in New York in the 1990s.

Their response was zero tolerance policing where the criminal justice system took low-level crime and anti-social behaviour much more seriously than they had in the past. This included "three strikes and you're out" policies where people could get serious custodial sentences for repeated minor offences, such as unsolicited windscreen cleaning, prostitution, drunk and disorderly behaviour, etc.

The idea was that low-level crime should not be tolerated and severe penalties needed to be meted out for anti-social behaviour and minor incivilities in order to deter more serious crime and ensure that collective conscience and social solidarity is maintained by clear boundary maintenance.

Evaluating Broken Windows Theory

The impact of the policy in New York appeared to be dramatic with crime levels (including very serious crimes like murder) falling rapidly. There was a 40% drop in overall crime and over 50% in homicide. Fans of Broken Windows on the political right in America hailed this as a success, but there are two main criticisms.
This policy coincided with a period of economic growth and a reduction in poverty. Those who feel that social conditions are a stronger driver of crime than broken windows suggest that the crime rates in New York fell because the social conditions for people in New York significantly improved. As such it is possible that it was purely a coincidence that it happened at the same time as the implementation of broken windows. Just because there was a correlation does not mean that there was causality .
Some accused Broken Windows of achieving control without justice. Yes, the crime rates fell, but people were in prison, sometimes serving long sentences, for very minor misdemeanours. Furthermore, there was evidence showing that the policy impacted much more heavily on minority ethnic groups, particularly African Americans and Latin Americans, than on the majority white population. While poor black people might be arrested for public drunkenness or jay-walking, white middle-class students celebrating the start of their freshman year by doing the same things are tolerated. Therefore, police discretion makes the implementation of broken windows unjust. Supporters of the theory, however, would counter that zero tolerance should mean zero tolerance and white students shouldn't get away with public drunkenness either.

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Broken Windows Thesis

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Gerben Bruinsma

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Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

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Hinkle, J.C. (2014). Broken Windows Thesis. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_14

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Broken Windows Theory

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

The broken windows theory states that visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes. The principle was developed to explain the decay of neighborhoods, but it is often applied to work and educational environments.

What Is the Broken Windows Theory?
Do Broken Windows Policies Work?

The broken windows theory, defined in 1982 by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling, drawing on earlier research by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, argues that no matter how rich or poor a neighborhood, one broken window would soon lead to many more windows being broken: “One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.” Disorder increases levels of fear among citizens, which leads them to withdraw from the community and decrease participation in informal social control.

The broken windows are a metaphor for any visible sign of disorder in an environment that goes untended. This may include small crimes, acts of vandalism, drunken or disorderly conduct, etc. Being forced to confront minor problems can heavily influence how people feel about their environment, particularly their sense of safety.

With the help of small civic organizations, lower-income Chicago residents have created over 800 community gardens and urban farms out of burnt buildings and vacant lots. Now, instead of having trouble finding fresh produce, these neighborhoods have become go-to food destinations. This example of the broken windows theory benefits the people by lowering temperatures in overheated cities, increasing socialization, reducing stress , and teaching children about nature.

George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson popularized the broken windows theory in an article published in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic . They asserted that vandalism and smaller crimes would normalize larger crimes (although this hypothesis has not been fully supported by subsequent research). They also remarked on how signs of disorder (e.g., a broken window) stirred up feelings of fear in residents and harmed the safety of the neighborhood as a whole.

The broken windows theory was put forth at a time when crime rates were soaring, and it often spurred politicians to advocate policies for increasing policing of petty crimes—fare evasion, public drinking, or graffiti—as a way to prevent, and decrease, major crimes including violence. The theory was notably implemented and popularized by New York City mayor Rudolf Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton. In research reported in 2000, Kelling claimed that broken-windows policing had prevented over 60,000 violent crimes between 1989 and 1998 in New York City, though critics of the theory disagreed.

Although the “Broken Windows” article is one of the most cited in the history of criminology , Kelling contends that it has often been misapplied. The implementation soon escalated to “zero tolerance” policing policies, especially in minority communities. It also led to controversial practices such as “stop and frisk” and an increase in police misconduct complaints.

Most important, research indicates that criminal activity was declining on its own, for a number of demographic and socio-economic reasons, and so credit for the shift could not be firmly attributed to broken-windows policing policies. Experts point out that there is “no support for a simple first-order disorder-crime relationship,” contends Columbia law professor Bernard E. Harcourt. The causes of misbehavior are varied and complex.

The effectiveness of this approach depends on how it is implemented. In 2016, Dr. Charles Branas led an initiative to repair abandoned properties and transform vacant lots into community parks in high-crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia, which subsequently saw a 39% reduction in gun violence. By building “palaces for the people” with these safe and sustainable solutions, neighborhoods can be lifted up, and crime can be reduced.

When a neighborhood, even a poor one, is well-tended and welcoming, its residents have a greater sense of safety. Building and maintaining social infrastructure—such as public libraries, parks and other green spaces, and active retail corridors—can be a more sustainable option and improve the daily lives of the people who live there.

According to the broken windows theory, disorder (symbolized by a broken window) leads to fear and the potential for increased and more severe crime. Unfortunately, this concept has been misapplied, leading to aggressive and zero-tolerance policing. These policing strategies tend to focus on an increased police presence in troubled communities (especially those with minorities and lower-income residents) and stricter punishments for minor infractions (e.g., marijuana use).

Zero-tolerance policing metes out predetermined consequences regardless of the severity or context of a crime. Zero-tolerance policies can be harmful in an academic setting, as vulnerable youth (particularly those from minority ethnic/racial backgrounds) find themselves trapped in the School-to-Prison Pipeline for committing minor infractions.

Aggressive policing practices can sour relationships between police and the community. However, problem-oriented policing—which identifies the specific problems or “broken windows” in a neighborhood and then comes up with proactive responses—can help reduce crime. This evidence-based policing strategy has been shown to be effective.

We question the contribution made by criminology to the practicalities of policing and suggest that police officers would be better off acquainting themselves with psychology.

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BMC Health Serv Res

An empirical application of “broken windows” and related theories in healthcare: examining disorder, patient safety, staff outcomes, and collective efficacy in hospitals

Louise a. ellis.

Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Kate Churruca

Yvonne tran, janet c. long, chiara pomare, jeffrey braithwaite, associated data.

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Broken windows theory (BWT) proposes that visible signs of crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour – however minor – lead to further levels of crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour. While we acknowledge divisive and controversial policy developments that were based on BWT, theories of neighbourhood disorder have recently been proposed to have utility in healthcare, emphasising the potential negative effects of disorder on staff and patients, as well as the potential role of collective efficacy in mediating its effects. The aim of this study was to empirically examine the relationship between disorder, collective efficacy and outcome measures in hospital settings. We additionally sought to develop and validate a survey instrument for assessing BWT in hospital settings.

Cross-sectional survey of clinical and non-clinical staff from four major hospitals in Australia. The survey included the Disorder and Collective Efficacy Survey (DaCEs) (developed for the present study) and outcome measures: job satisfaction, burnout, and patient safety. Construct validity was evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and reliability was assessed by internal consistency. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test a hypothesised model between disorder and patient safety and staff outcomes.

The present study found that both social and physical disorder were positively related to burnout, and negatively related to job satisfaction and patient safety. Further, we found support for the hypothesis that the relationship from social disorder to outcomes (burnout, job satisfaction, patient safety) was mediated by collective efficacy (social cohesion, willingness to intervene).

Conclusions

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-020-05974-0.

A long tradition exists in criminology and social-psychology research on the concept of neighbourhood disorder and in what ways disorder relates to anti-social behaviour and poor outcomes [ 1 ] . Interest in neighbourhood disorder is readily apparent in Broken Window Theory (BWT) [ 2 ], as well as in alternative perspectives of disorder involving shared expectation and cohesion—more broadly known as collective efficacy [ 3 – 5 ]—that are consistent with social disorganisation theory. The current study draws from these various theories and insights into neighbourhood disorder and applies them to hospital settings. At this point, we must make clear our intentions in applying neighbourhood disorder theories to healthcare. It is perilous to expect theories of neighbourhood disorder can be perfectly replicable in an organisational setting, nor do we consider that all elements of the theories are applicable to hospital settings (such as the concept of fear) [ 6 ] . We particularly reject the flawed ramifications of these theories that saw victimisation and blame attributed to individual neighbourhood members. However, here, we consider that concepts from neighbourhood studies may have considerable promise to shed new light on the relationships between the physical and social environments of hospitals on the one hand, and the health, wellbeing and behaviour of staff and patients, on the other [ 7 ] . We begin by reviewing the history and evolution of these theories before considering their application to healthcare.

Broken windows: a theory of disorder in neighbourhoods

Broken windows theory (BWT), as a social-psychological theory of urban decline, was originally developed almost 40 years ago by Wilson and Kelling [ 2 ]. Proponents of this theory argue that both physical disorder (e.g., broken windows, graffiti, litter) and social disorder (e.g., vandalism, antisocial activities) provide important environmental cues to the kinds of negative actions that are normalised and tolerated in an area, fuelling further incivility and more serious crime. For example, signs of disorder can signal potential safety issues to residents of a neighbourhood, leading to their withdrawal from public spaces, and thereby a reduction in informal social control, further perpetuating the effects of disorder [ 2 ].

Defining disorder

Although debates have occurred in the literature as to what counts as disorder, it has usually been defined as representing “minor violations of social norms” ([ 8 ] p4923). Some researchers have made a distinction between physical and social disorder, with physical disorder relating to the overall appearance of an area and social disorder directly involving people [ 9 ]. Thinking about disorder in this way, neighbourhoods with high levels of physical disorder were defined as: noisy, dirty, and run-down; buildings are in disrepair or abandoned; and vandalism and graffiti are common [ 10 ]. On the other hand, signs of social disorder in neighbourhoods may include the presence of people hanging out on the streets, drinking, or taking drugs [ 10 ]. Researchers highlight the importance of measuring perceptions of physical and social disorder as separate factors [ 9 , 11 ] with recent studies finding differential impacts of the two types of disorder [ 12 ].

Rethinking disorder: the role of collective efficacy

The BWT originally proposed by Wilson and Kelling [ 2 ] suggested a causal relationship with disorder leading to crime, which had a significant bearing upon subsequent controversial policy developments, such as ‘zero-tolerance policing’ [ 13 ] and ‘stop-and-frisk’ programs [ 14 ]. Under this approach, police pay attention to every facet of the law, including minor offences, such as public drinking and vandalism, with the aim of preventing more serious crimes from occurring [ 13 ]. The level of support these policing strategies have received has been surprising, given that BWT has not received a commensurate amount of study to date, and the research on crime that does exist is equivocal [ 12 ]. In particular, there has been an ongoing debate in the academic literature over whether BWT posits a direct or indirect relationship between disorder and crime. Most prominently, Sampson and Raudenbush [ 4 ] reconsidered the claims of BWT and argued instead that physical and social disorder were not generally causal antecedents to more serious crimes. Consistent with social disorganisation theory [ 3 ], Sampson and Raudenbush [ 4 ] suggested that collective efficacy has a significant influence on criminality in neighbourhoods. They defined collective efficacy as “social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good” ([ 5 ] p918). Empirical results supported their conceptual ideas in that the positive relationship between disorder and crime was mediated by collective efficacy [ 4 ].

Other lines of research have found a direct association between disorder and crime even when controlling for collective efficacy (e.g., [ 15 ]). For example, Plank et al. [ 16 ] studied disorder and collective efficacy in a school setting. They found a robust association between both disorder and violence (i.e., crime) while controlling for collective efficacy. They concluded that “fixing broken windows and attending to the physical appearance of the school cannot alone guarantee productive teaching and learning, but ignoring them greatly increases the chances of a troubling downward spiral” ([ 16 ] p244). In summary, the results are mixed as to the extent that there is direct effect of disorder on crime or other poor outcomes, but the evidence clearly suggests that there is at least an indirect effect. The key problem is what people do with this information. There is no justification for blaming individuals or demonising groups or neighbourhoods for their behaviour. We do not in any way condone seriously erroneous and consequential victimisation of people or groups as a result of the application of BWT. But we do think this is an area worthy of study.

Applying broken windows theory to healthcare

Following recent interest in applying BWT to smaller, more circumscribed environments, such as workplaces [ 17 , 18 ], researchers have started to consider the application of BWT to healthcare settings [ 7 , 19 , 20 ]. There are several well-studied trends in health services research that support this application. Theories and studies of increasing popularity include: the normalisation of deviance [ 21 ], behavioural modelling in hand hygiene [ 22 ], hospital workplace violence [ 23 ], and the association between staff’s safe work practices and their perceiving their work area as cluttered and disorderly [ 24 ].

Disorder in hospitals may include negative deviations, trade-offs or workarounds that manifest continuously in complex, dynamic and time-pressured environments, which can contribute to poor staff outcomes [ 25 – 27 ]. While trade-offs and workarounds occur in every setting, and they may have many benefits including signalling productive flexibility and staff capacity for manoeuvring, they can also represent risk in healthcare. For example, some researchers have shown that small deviations such as violating recommended processes for use of local anaesthesia can be detrimental, potentially even leading to death [ 28 ]. In line with BWT logic, there is evidence to suggest that the physical hospital environment influences the health and wellbeing of staff and patients [ 29 ]. Similarly, evidence shows that social disorder (e.g., bullying, violence) can influence staff in healthcare organisations [ 23 , 30 ]. All of these examples highlight the potential negative perpetuating effects of disorder in healthcare organisations and how disorder may detrimentally affect patients, such as through poor patient safety outcomes (see Fig. 1 [ 7 ]). Despite the elevated interest in BWT, we could find no empirical study of disorder in hospitals, nor any examination of the role of collective efficacy on staff outcomes or patient safety.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 12913_2020_5974_Fig1_HTML.jpg

Proposed model of disorder in hospitals Source: Churruca, Ellis et al., 2018 [ 7 ]

Aims of the present study

The primary purpose of the present study is to empirically examine the relationship between hospital disorder and three key outcomes: staff burnout, staff job satisfaction, and patient safety. We also sought to address the contention in the literature regarding the role of collective efficacy (defined here as social cohesion among hospital staff and their willingness to intervene to address problems) between hospital disorder and outcomes. The first aim was to develop a short but valid and reliable survey instrument for measuring physical disorder, social disorder, social cohesion and willingness to intervene in hospital settings. Based on previous research, physical and social disorder were kept as separate constructs. We then sought to test the following three research questions:

Is there a significant association between hospital disorder (physical disorder, social disorder) and staff outcomes (burnout, job satisfaction)?
Is there a significant association between hospital disorder (physical disorder, social disorder) and patient safety?

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 12913_2020_5974_Fig2_HTML.jpg

Hypothesised mediation model

Participants and setting

The study employed a cross-sectional survey of staff from four major hospitals in Australia. All hospital sites were public hospitals in metropolitan areas with over 200 beds. The sites were selected based on the similarity in the types of services offered (e.g., emergency department, intensive care, surgical, medical, geriatric care) and that they were located within areas of varying relative socio-economic disadvantage [ 31 ]. All hospital staff were invited to participate in the study through an invitation sent to their work email address. The email included a link to an online version of the survey via Qualtrics [ 32 ].

Survey development

The Disorder and Collective Efficacy survey (DaCEs) for hospital staff was developed for the present study based on an extensive review of the BWT literature. An initial pool of items was formed to assess the hypothesised constructs of the DaCEs: Physical disorder (19 items), social disorder (13 items), and collective efficacy, represented by social cohesion (12 items) and willingness to intervene (10 items). Some of the items were adapted from existing scales [ 16 , 24 , 33 – 35 ], and others were purpose-developed by the research team (see Supplementary File 1 ). Items were modified to make them relevant to a hospital context. All items were answered on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). A panel of experts in healthcare ( n = 10; hospital staff and researchers) reviewed and provided feedback on the wording of items mapping onto each of the hypothesised constructs and checked for possible misinterpretations of questions, instructions and response format. Minor adjustments were made to the initial item pool (see Supplementary File 1 ). The aim was then to refine the item pool to produce a survey that would be short enough to be completed by busy hospital workers, but which has satisfactory psychometric properties.

Staff outcomes

The survey included existing validated scales to measure staff burnout and job satisfaction. Burnout was measured through a 10-item version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) [ 36 – 38 ]. Two subscales of burnout—emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation—were used for the current survey as the third subscale, personal accomplishment, was deemed less relevant to nonclinical staff. Burnout items were answered on a seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). The job satisfaction section of the Job Diagnostic Survey (5 items) was selected to capture individual’s feelings about their job [ 39 ]. Job satisfaction items were answered on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Patient safety

An item taken from the Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) was used as an indicator of patient safety [ 40 ]. This item is an outcome measure for patient safety that asks staff to provide an overall patient safety grade for their hospital (1 = excellent to 5 = failing).

Data analysis

Participants missing more than 10% of survey data were excluded. Remaining missing values were imputed using the Expectation Maximisation (EM) Algorithm within SPSS, version 25 [ 41 ]. Some items were then reversed coded so that higher item-response scores indicated a greater extent of job satisfaction, burnout, disorder, willingness to intervene, and patient safety (See Supplementary File 1 for individual recoded items). Frequency distributions were calculated to test whether items violated the assumption of univariate normality (i.e., skewness index ≥3, kurtosis index ≥10). As a number of the items were skewed (i.e., skewness index ≥3), the chi-square significance value was corrected for bias using the Bollen-Stine bootstrapping method [ 42 ] based on 1000 bootstrapped samples.

Items were evaluated psychometrically via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), using a two-stage process. First, to refine the initial item pool, four one-factor congeneric models (of physical disorder, social disorder, social cohesion and willingness to intervene items) were run using AMOS, version 25 [ 43 ]. Here, our analytic plan involved removing one item at a time from each model using the following strategy: (i) removing items with the lowest factor loadings while maintaining the theoretical content and meaning of the proposed construct; (ii) removing items as long as each construct contained at least four observed variables; and (iii) items were removed as long as the resulting model demonstrated an improved model fit [ 44 , 45 ]. Differences in model fit were assessed using the chi-square difference test [ 46 ]. Second, two two-factor models were used to assess the factor structure of items related to disorder (i.e., physical disorder, social disorder) and collective efficacy (i.e., social cohesion, willingness to intervene) using the reduced item sets. Each item was loaded on the one factor it purported to represent. Further item refinement was undertaken as required through inspection of factor loadings, standardised residuals and modification indices to reduce each scale to three or four items. Goodness-of-fit was assessed using the Tucker Lewis Index (TLI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEAs), and chi-square, with significance value supplemented by the Bollen-Stine bootstrap test. The TLI and CFI yield values ranging from zero to 1.00, with values greater than .90 and .95 being indicative of acceptable and excellent fit to the data [ 47 ]. For RMSEAs, values less than .05 indicate good fit, and values as high as .08 represent reasonable errors of approximation in the population [ 48 ]. For the Bollen-Stine test, non-significant values indicate that the proposed model is correct. Reliability of each of the subscales was assessed through Cronbach’s alpha (using SPSS, version 25) and composite reliability (using AMOS, version 25).

The hypothesised mediation model (Fig. 2 ) was assessed using structural equation modelling (SEM) in AMOS, version 25 [ 43 ]. First, we tested the direct effects from disorder (physical and social) to each outcome (burnout, job satisfaction, patient safety), followed by the indirect effect from disorder to outcomes, through collective efficacy (social cohesion, willingness to intervene). A parametric bootstrapping approach was used to test mediation. Under the bootstrapping approach, indirect effects are of interest and based on bootstrapped standard errors (with 1000 draws) [ 49 , 50 ]. Model fit was evaluated using CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and chi-square.

Descriptive statistics, distribution, reliability and confirmatory factor analysis

Participants were 415 staff from four hospitals in Australia. Once participants with more than 10% of survey data missing were excluded, the remaining sample was reduced to 340. Of the 340 participants, most were female (77.5%), worked as a nurse (34.2%), and had been working in the same hospital for three or more years (76.1%). The characteristics of the survey respondents are presented in Table 1 .

Characteristics of survey respondents ( n = 340)

Note. Columns may not equal total N due to missing demographic responses

Descriptive statistics and data pertaining to assumptions of normality for all items are presented in Supplementary File 1 . The vast majority of the social disorder, social cohesion and willingness to intervene items demonstrated a skewness index greater than three, while only three items demonstrated a kurtosis index greater than 10 (SD7, SD10, SC6). As a result, Bollen-Stine bootstrapping was conducted in order to improve accuracy when assessing parameter estimates and fit indices.

To refine the initial item pool, first four one-factor congeneric models were run for items designed to measure physical disorder, social disorder, social cohesion and willingness to intervene. Based on an examination of modification indices and standardised factor loadings, items were removed one at a time, until the four strongest items remained. As shown in Table 2 , the reduced four-item constructs demonstrated much improved model fit statistics relative to the full models with all items. Chi-squared difference tests for all four constructs were significant, indicating that the reduced item constructs were significantly better models. The results of the chi-squared difference tests were: Physical disorder, (χ 2 difference = 139, df = 18, p < .001), social disorder (χ 2 difference = 680, df = 63, p < .001), social cohesion (χ 2 difference = 302, df = 52, p < .001), and willingness to intervene (χ 2 difference = 243, df = 33, p < .001).

Model fit for the one-factor congeneric models

Two two-factor models of disorder (physical disorder, social disorder) and collective efficacy (social cohesion, willingness to intervene) were then tested through CFA each using eight of their respective items. Each item was loaded on the one factor it purported to represent. Where required, further item refinement was undertaken through inspection of factor loadings, standardised residuals and modification indices. The two-factor model of disorder, including four physical disorder items and four social disorder items produced an adequate fit to the data, χ 2 (19) = 54.06, TLI = .96, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .08, though the Bollen-Stine bootstrap was significant ( p = .005). Inspection of the standardised factor loadings for items PD3 and SD3 suggested that their removal may improve model fit. The removal of these two items resulted in an improved model fit, χ2 (8) = 18.28, TLI = .979, CFI = .989, RMSEA = .062, and the Bollen-Stine bootstrap ( p = .057). The standardised factor loadings for the six items remaining ranged from .71 to .90. The correlation between physical disorder and social disorder was low, but significant ( r = .17, p = .007). Next, a two-factor model of collective efficacy consisting of four social cohesion items and four willingness to intervene items were tested. This model produced an excellent fit to the data, χ2 (19) = 25.36, TLI = .99, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = .06, and the Bollen-Stine bootstrap was not significant ( p = .458). The standardised factor loadings for the six items ranged from .68 to .90, and the correlation between social cohesion and willingness to intervene was strong, r = .69, p < .001. The retained items from the two-factor models are presented in Table 3 , along with their factor loadings. Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability for the final items is also shown in Table 3 , demonstrating that all four scales demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability.

CFA results for reduced two factor models of disorder and collective efficacy

Research question 1: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and staff outcomes?

In order to examine the relationship between hospital disorder and staff outcomes, four separate models were run (i.e., models were run separately for physical disorder and social disorder, each with burnout and job satisfaction as dependent variables). Findings are presented in Supplementary File 2 . The results showed that physical disorder was significantly associated with higher burnout (β = .26, p < .001) and lower job satisfaction (β = −.40, p < .001). Similarly, social disorder was significantly associated with higher burnout (β = .23, p < .001) and lower job satisfaction (β = −.54, p < .001).

Research question 2: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and patient safety?

Two separate models were run for physical disorder and social disorder (Supplementary File 2 ). Physical disorder was significantly associated with lower patient safety scores (β = −.15, p = .008). Likewise, a greater extent of social disorder was significantly associated with lower levels of patient safety (β = −.26, p < .001).

Research question 3: does staff collective efficacy mediate the relationship between disorder and outcomes?

We then tested three separate mediation models for each outcome measure where the relationship between disorder and outcomes was mediated by collective efficacy via bootstrapping. For burnout, the model fit the data well, χ2 (81) = 142.75, TLI = .97, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .05. The findings presented in Fig. 3 show that there were significant negative paths from: social disorder to social cohesion (β = −.45, p = .003); social disorder to willingness to intervene (β = −.49, p = .002); social cohesion to burnout (β = −.23, p = .022); and willingness to intervene to burnout (β = −.33, p = .004). However, the paths from physical disorder to social cohesion (β = −.11, p = .077) and from physical disorder to willingness to intervene (β = −.04, p = .466) were not significant. Alongside these parameters, there was a significant direct effect from physical disorder to burnout (β = .18, p = .001), but not from social disorder to burnout (β = −.07, p = .351). Importantly, bootstrapped analyses for indirect effects indicated a significant indirect path from social disorder to burnout via social cohesion and willingness to intervene (β = .26, p = .001). However, the indirect path from physical disorder to burnout was not significant (β = .04, p = .205).

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Model of disorder and burnout, mediated by collective efficacy

For job satisfaction, the model provided an adequate fit to the data, χ2 (125) = 274.69, TLI = .95, CFI = .96, RMSEA = .06 (Fig. 4 ). The findings show that there was a significant path from social cohesion to job satisfaction (β = .34, p = .002) and from willingness to intervene to job satisfaction (β = .38, p = .001). The direct effects from physical disorder to job satisfaction (β = −.06, p = .233) and from social disorder to job satisfaction (β = −.04, p = .575) were not significant. Bootstrapped analyses for indirect effects indicated a significant indirect path from social disorder to job satisfaction via social cohesion and willingness to intervene (β = −.34, p = .001). However, the indirect path from physical disorder to burnout was not significant (β = −.05, p = .171).

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Model of disorder and job satisfaction, mediated by collective efficacy

For patient safety, the model fit provided a satisfactory fit to the data, χ2 (81) = 171.26, TLI = .96, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .06. The findings are presented in Fig. 5 and show that there was a significant path from willingness to intervene to patient safety (β = .23, p = .041). The path from social cohesion to patient safety just failed to reach significance (β = .20, p = .057). The direct effects from physical disorder to patient safety (β = −.08, p = .155) and from social disorder to patient safety (β = −.04, p = .612) were not significant. The indirect effects indicated a significant indirect path from social disorder to patient safety via social cohesion and willingness to intervene (β = −.20, p = .001). However, the indirect path from physical disorder to burnout was not significant (β = −.03, p = .174).

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Model of disorder and patient safety, mediated by collective efficacy

BWT and related theories of neighbourhood disorder were used here as a novel way of studying the influence of hospital environment on staff outcomes and patient safety. In this study, we developed and validated a survey instrument of disorder and collective efficacy for hospital staff—the DaCEs. In response to our research questions, we found that both social and physical disorder were positively related to burnout and negatively related to job satisfaction and patient safety. This indicated that the greater the perceived disorder in hospitals the higher the burnout and lower job satisfaction in hospital staff, and lower ratings of patient safety. Although neighbourhood disorder theories are not perfectly applicable to a hospital setting, our findings are broadly analogous with previous neighbourhood research and suggest that while attending to the physical appearance of the hospital cannot alone guarantee better staff and patient outcomes, ignoring them can significantly increase the chances of poorer outcomes. The present study also found support for the contention that collective efficacy mediated the relationship between social disorder and outcomes (burnout, job satisfaction, patient safety), but not for physical disorder.

This study is one of the first to empirically evaluate neighbourhood disorder theories in healthcare. Consistent with the original BWT, we found that perceptions of social and physical disorder were associated with potential safety issues [ 2 ], in this case, low patient safety ratings in hospitals. Past research on neighbourhood disorder supports the association between perceived neighbourhood disorder and poor mental health [ 51 ], corresponding with the present study’s findings that hospital disorder was associated with low job satisfaction and high burnout. These findings shed light on the potential relationship between culture and disorder in hospitals. We recognise that BWT has received considerable criticism over the years [ 1 ], particularly in response to controversial policy developments that were based on the BWT perspective. At this point, we must make clear that we do not advocate such policies, and find them abhorrent. However, we do contend that it seems likely that disorder is a marker for a poorer workplace culture compared to a workplace that is perceived as more orderly by hospital staff. This represents further converging evidence that having a productive, functional, more orderly culture is good for both staff and patients and not having a collective, efficacious, productive, collaborative culture is not [ 52 ].

Consistent with previous research, our study findings demonstrate the differential effects of physical and social disorder on outcome measures [ 11 , 53 ]. While both types of disorder were found to be directly related to all outcomes, once collective efficacy was added to the model, the relationship between social disorder and each of the outcomes became non-significant. In summary, consistent with the assertions of Sampson and Raudenbush [ 4 ] and in concordance with social disorganisation theory, we found that the relationship between social disorder and all outcome measures was significantly mediated by collective efficacy; however, this was not the case for physical disorder. As for the potential reasons for these findings, from a research standpoint, social disorder and physical disorder are qualitatively different: neighbourhood social disorder has been described as “episodic behaviour” involving individuals “which only lasts for a limited amount of time”, whereas neighbourhood physical disorder instead refers to “the deterioration of urban landscapes” and “does not necessarily involve actors” ([ 53 ] p5). Similarly, in a hospital setting, physical disorder may be perceived by staff as a more stable and constant presence in the hospital environment. In other words, hospital staff may be “inoculated” ([ 12 ] p411) to the presence of physical disorder in the hospital environment, with collective efficacy being less likely to alter or affect the relationship between physical disorder and outcomes.

A further explanation as to why the relationship between social disorder and all three outcome measures were mediated by collective efficacy, but not for physical disorder, is because when social disorder manifests in hospitals (e.g., non-compliance, wasting time), healthcare staff must work together to ‘pick up the slack’ to avoid serious threats to the safety and quality of care delivered. For example, if certain staff are absent or late in a particular hospital ward, the rest of the staff in that ward must work together to negate the likelihood of patient safety issues. Working as a team to make up for the social disorder may prevent any one individual staff member experiencing burnout and low job satisfaction. Indeed, this is consistent with past research showing that collaboration in hospitals has a positive effect on staff and patient outcomes, including patient safety, burnout, and job satisfaction [ 54 ]. This differs to physical disorder (e.g., run-down hospital, vandalism) where it is not necessarily seen as the responsibility of hospital staff to work collaboratively and address this form of disorder. That is, while staff must work together to address issues of social disorder such as someone being absent or late, physical disorder is more likely to be seen to be needing to be dealt with on the organisational level. For example, a hospital being in need of repair needs intervention from the government, NHS Trust, Board of Governors or local health district which can provide the necessary resources to redevelop the infrastructure.

This study thereby contributes to the broader BWT and related neighbourhood disorder field as it highlights the importance of keeping social and physical disorder as separate constructs when assessing disorder. Further, this study highlights the importance of encouraging collective efficacy among hospital staff as it can act as a barrier between social disorder and poor staff outcomes and patient safety issues.

Strengths and limitations

A strength of this study was the development of an initial psychometric profile for the measure of disorder and collective efficacy for hospitals, with its psychometric properties being assessed across four hospital sites in Australia. As to limitations, the study was based on self-reports of staff and, as with all research of this kind, is reflective of the perceptions of the agents involved. We did not include patients’ self-reports or observational research. The data was collected at one time point and therefore cannot identify any causal influence of physical and social disorder on outcomes which would require longitudinal studies involving repeated sampling on the same set of study participants. The findings concerning patient safety would need to be replicated in view of the fact that only one item was used to assess patient safety and therefore the measure has unestablished reliability. The DaCEs also warrants further cross-validation of its factor structure, as the final items were selected on the basis of results from our four included hospitals, and may not be generalisable to all hospital systems. Optimally, CFA should be randomly divided into subgroups (calibration and validation samples) to validate and verify the factor structure of the tool [ 55 ]. However, the current study was limited by the relatively modest sample size, and further work would be needed to verify the validity of the tool.

As one of the first studies to empirically test theories of neighbourhood disorder in healthcare, we found that a positive, orderly, productive culture is likely to lead to wellbeing for staff and better safety for patients, and vice versa. This is a modified study of BWT and related theories in hospitals, and one of the few studies to assess associations between different forms of disorder, collective efficacy, and staff and patient outcomes. Our hypothesised mediation model was supported, showing that the relationship between social disorder and outcomes (job satisfaction, burnout, patient safety) was mediated by collective efficacy. Having established and tested the robustness of the model, we offer it for new applications and future studies on this topic and highlight the importance of studying physical and social disorder as separate constructs. This study demonstrates the potential benefits of encouraging collective efficacy among hospital staff as it can act as a barrier to poor staff wellbeing and patient safety issues when there is social disorder.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all hospital staff that participated in the survey.

Abbreviations

Authors’ contributions.

LAE, KC, JCL and JB conceived the study. LAE, KC, JCL and CP designed the DaCEs and drafted the paper. LAE, YT and CP performed the analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

This work is supported in part by National Health and Medical Research Council grants held by JB (APP9100002, APP1176620 and APP1135048). The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

Availability of data and materials

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The ethical conduct of this study was approved by South Eastern Sydney Local Health District (HREC ref. no: 16/363). Governance approvals to conduct the research were obtained for each site. Participation was voluntary and anonymous. Participants provided written consent.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Louise A. Ellis, Email: [email protected] .

Kate Churruca, Email: [email protected] .

Yvonne Tran, Email: [email protected] .

Janet C. Long, Email: [email protected] .

Chiara Pomare, Email: [email protected] .

Jeffrey Braithwaite, Email: [email protected] .

ReviseSociology

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Broken Windows Theory: An Evaluation

The Broken Windows Theory posits that physical disorder like litter and vandalism can lead to higher crime rates, with informal social control methods seen as effective remedies. Evidence is mixed; a 2008 experiment found increased deviant behaviour in untidy environments, while a 2015 meta-analysis supported disorder-focused community interventions as crime reducers. However, a study on the “Moving to Opportunity” program found no correlation between disorderly environments and crime rates. Evaluating the theory is complex due to issues like defining and measuring disorder, and the possible influence of confounding variables.

Table of Contents

Last Updated on November 30, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Broken Windows Theory suggests that high levels of physical disorder such as litter, graffiti, vandalism, or people engaged in Anti-Social Behaviour will result in higher crime rates. Broken Windows Theory is one aspect of the Right Realist approach to criminology .

Broken Windows Theory suggests that the most effective way to reduce crime is through informal social control methods. Policies which focus on urban renewal, and neighbourhood watch groups for example should help to reduce crime.

The evidence supporting Broken Windows Theory is somewhat mixed .

Broken Windows Theory: Supporting Evidence

This 2008 ‘£5 Note Theft and Social Disorder Experiment’ offers broad support for the theory…

In this (slightly bizarre sounding) experiment the researchers placed an envelope containing a £5 note poking out a letterbox, in such a way that the £5 note was easily visible.

The researchers did this first of all in a house with a tidy garden, and later on (at a similar time of day) with a house with litter in the garden.

13% of people took the envelope from the house with the tidy garden.
25% of people took the envelope from the house with the untidy garden.

This suggests that that signs of physical disorder such as littering encourage deviant behaviour.

The experiment was actually a bit more complex – for the full details see the Keizer et al source below – this was also actually one of six experiments designed to test out Wilson and Kelling’s 1996 ‘broken windows theory’.

Meta Analysis supports Broken Windows Theory

A 2015 Meta-Analysis of 30 studies which had been designed to evaluated social disorder policing. The analysis found that community and problem-solving interventions focused on reducing levels of social disorder in specific locations had the strongest effect on reducing crime levels.

Evidence not supporting Broken Windows Theory

A second experiment, however, does not support broken windows theory…

Empirical results of the “Moving to Opportunity” program (reviewed in 2006) – a social experiment in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Boston did not support Broken Windows Theory.

As part of the program, some 4,600 low-income families living in high-crime public housing communities—characterised by high rates of social disorder—were randomly assigned housing vouchers to move to less disadvantaged and less disorderly communities. Using official arrests and self-report surveys, the crime rates among those who moved and those who did not remained the same.

This study suggests the root cause of crime lies with individuals, not the quality of the physical locations.

The problems with evaluating Broken Windows Theory

Wesley Skogan (see source below) identifies several reasons why Broken Windows theory is hard to evaluate – mainly focusing on how hard the theory is to operationalise:

There are several different ways of defining ‘social disorder’ (litter, vandalism, antisocial behaviour) – so which do you choose?
It difficult to measure levels of social disorder accurately. How do you actually measure how much disorder what type of littler represents? is one sofa in a garden worth 14 toffee wrappers, or what? And if you’re talking about anti-social behaviour, you can’t necessarily rely on public reports of it because sensitivity levels vary, and it’s just not practical to measure it using observational techniques.

Then there is the problem of other confounding variables. Many of the early experiments in the 1980s and 1990s which tested Broken Windows Theory were running at a time when broader social changes were occurring, which could have been the causes of the lowering crime rate.

For example in the late 1990s in New York, the crack-epidemic was decreasing, there were declining numbers of young males aged 16-24 and more people being put in jail, all of which could have reduced the crime rate. Any experiment set up to improve levels of social disorder in a New York neighbourhood thus may not have been the cause of a decrease in crime over the years, it could have just been down to these factors. The same logic can be applied to any long-term experiment.

For these reasons, the validity of broken windows theory is always likely to remain contested, and so it’s worth considering the possibility that it’s popularity could be more to do with ideological bias rather than being based any significant body of supporting evidence.

Signposting and Sources

This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance Module , usually taught as part of the second year A-level in sociology.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Keizer et al – The Spreading of Disorder – Science Express Report.

More details on the Moving to Opportunity study .

This chapter by Wesley Skogan identifies a number of reasons why Broken Windows Theory is difficult to evaluate.

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What is Broken Windows Theory?

Photo by Matt Artz on Unsplash

Broken Windows Theory originated from a 1982 article in Atlantic Monthly written by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. The basic idea was that when there is some form of environmental decay, such as broken windows, it gives the impression that the neighbourhood or area is uncared for. In turn, this leads to an increase in crime, especially petty crime such as graffiti or further damage to property. Subsequently, the more decay, the greater the increase and severity of crime and the greater likelihood that social cohesion itself will also break down.

Philip Zimbardo

Kelling & Wilson’s article draws upon a 1969 psychology experiment into human behaviour by Philip Zimbardo (the same Zimbardo who did the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment). Although the psychology element here is of no particular concern in this article, Zimbardo nonetheless had turned his attention to vandalism and the mindless destruction of property along with its associated costs.

Zimbardo ran “ A Field Experiment on “Auto-Shaping” ” to observe vandalism in action. He bought two cars and left one in upmarket Palo Alto in California and one in the Bronx area of New York. As observed:

What happened in New York was unbelievable! Within ten minutes the 1959 Oldsmobile received its first auto strippers—a father, mother, and eight-year-old son. The mother appeared to be a lookout, while the son aided the father’s search of the trunk, glove compartment, and motor. He handed his father the tools necessary to remove the battery and radiator. Total time of destructive contact: seven minutes.

After three days of observation, Zimbardo concluded that the vehicle left in the Bronx had been targeted 23 times leaving the vehicle a complete wreck. Most of the vandalism happened during the day and was perpetrated by “clean-cut whites” who seemingly had the appearance of responsible citizens. On the other hand:

In startling contrast, the Palo Alto car not only emerged untouched, but when it began to rain, one passerby lowered the hood so that the motor would not get wet!

Order vs. Disorder

Kelling & Wilson’s article is very much premised on a dichotomy of order versus disorder. One of the problems here is the idea of what constitutes order and what constitutes disorder especially when Kelling & Wilson argue that “disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked in a kind of developmental sequence”. It seems that they believe order to be what is normal for a specific neighbourhood. This creates a problem where every neighbourhood has a different normal. Further, the use of the term “developmental sequence” seems to suggest small offences inevitably lead to more serious crime. Thus, without addressing minor disorder, more serious problems will inevitably occur. It is a similar argument to that of drug use whereby it is claimed that if a person starts with a soft drug, they will inevitably turn to hard drugs. This could be seen as a slippery slope fallacy.

Zero tolerance

In the 1990’s, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani began a new zero tolerance initiative reportedly on the logic of Broken Windows Theory. Through a heavy crackdown on minor offences such as drunkenness, graffiti, and even jaywalking, the New York police were credited with a 37% drop in crime over three years (Bratton, 1998: 29-43). On the surface, this seems to indicate a success. However, similar reductions in crime rates were also seen across other major U.S. cities around the same time but utilising much different policing methods.

Wacquant (2009b: 265) noted that zero tolerance action was targeted towards those already dispossessed and living in dispossessed districts. Rather than being the restoration of order as theorised by Kelling & Wilson, it was actually a “concentration of police and penal repression” that accounted for the drop in crime. Wacquant also argues that this repression was not linked to any criminological theory and that Broken Windows Theory was actually discovered after the fact and used to mask repressive police activities by presenting them as rational. Essentially, it was a form of punishing the poor.

Other Areas

Broken Windows Theory has also been applied in other areas. Some of these areas are quite unexpected but include tourism (Liu et al., 2019), work environments (Ramos & Torgler, 2012), consumer behaviour (Guido et al., 2015), and education (Kelly, 2017). Shipley & Bowker (2014: 379) also consider Broken Windows Theory as it applies to internet crime.

‌ Internet Policing

The internet is made up of innumerable communities just like the outside world. When online communities are not policed to maintain order, disorder and therefore crime begin to manifest. We could perhaps view this kind of application of Broken Windows Theory to the infamous 4Chan website. Over time, 4Chan grew from a kind of alternative community to being one of the most infamous producers of trouble on the internet. This trouble manifested from low-level trolling to major harassment campaigns as well as other more illegal content. It is important to note that it is individuals in the community who acted in this way but the Broken Windows argument would have it that this is due to lack of policing and orderliness. Individual actions however, bring us to some of the criticisms of Broken Windows Theory.

As Risjord (2014: 130) notes, Broken Windows Theory seems to command a response which demands that areas of decay should be cleaned up and that this itself would then deter crime. However, Risjord argues that “broken windows don’t steal purses”. In other words, investing in the visual quality of an area will make no difference as it is the behaviour of the individual which is the true source of order or disorder. Unless the behaviours and attitudes of those who commit petty crime are turned away from such actions, then nothing is going to change.

Loic Wacquant (2009b: 15) also describes how the conservative-aligned broken windows approach to crime was in fact a “pseudo-criminological alibi for the reorganisation of police work”. Through adopting a punitive approach to crime and masking it behind the veneer of theoretical respectability, it would in turn also be a vote winner amongst the middle and upper classes.

Kelling & Wilson’s original article, like many conservative approaches, widely ignores many other possibilities which could contribute to crime such as:

Unemployment
Mental health issues
Discrimination

This in itself creates a logical issue. These contributors to the causes of crime are ignored which suggests on the one hand that responsibility for crime is therefore located within the individual committing the crime. And yet, on the other hand, it is suggested that some broken windows can encourage crime. Ultimately, the source of crime becomes logically unlocatable. As such, how does one target the sources of crime?

Bratton, W. (1998). Crime is Down in New York City: Blame the Police. In: Zero tolerance: policing a free society . London: Iea Health And Welfare Unit, Cop.

Kelling, G.L. and Wilson, J.Q. (1982). Broken Windows . [online] The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/.

Kelly, J. M. (2017). The Achievement and Non-Achievement Effects of Repeating Another Year With a Teacher and Reversing Broken Windows Theory . Temple University.

Guido, G., Pino, G., Prete, M. I., & Bruno, I. (2015). Explaining the Deterioration of Elderly Consumers’ Behaviour through the Broken Windows Theory. Journal of Research for Consumers , (28), 1.

Liu, J., Wu, J.S. and Che, T. (2019). Understanding perceived environment quality in affecting tourists’ environmentally responsible behaviours: A broken windows theory perspective. Tourism Management Perspectives , 31, pp.236–244.

Ramos, J. and Torgler, B. (2012). Are Academics Messy? Testing the Broken Windows Theory with a Field Experiment in the Work Environment. Review of Law & Economics , 8(3).

Risjord, M. (2014). Philosophy of Social Science . Routledge.

Shipley, T.G. and Bowker, A. (2014). Investigating internet crimes: an introduction to solving crimes in cyberspace . Waltham, Ma: Syngress.

Wacquant, L. (2009a). Prisons of poverty . Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press.

Wacquant, L. (2009b). Punishing the poor: the neoliberal government of social insecurity . Durham NC: Duke University Press.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237–307.

Should I Study Sociology? An Unconventional Guide

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Sociological Perspectives

Research article
Open access
Published: 04 December 2020

An empirical application of “broken windows” and related theories in healthcare: examining disorder, patient safety, staff outcomes, and collective efficacy in hospitals

Louise A. Ellis ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6902-4578 1 ,
Kate Churruca 1 ,
Yvonne Tran 1 ,
Janet C. Long 1 ,
Chiara Pomare 1 &
Jeffrey Braithwaite 1

BMC Health Services Research volume 20 , Article number: 1123 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Conclusions

Peer Review reports

A long tradition exists in criminology and social-psychology research on the concept of neighbourhood disorder and in what ways disorder relates to anti-social behaviour and poor outcomes [ 1 ] . Interest in neighbourhood disorder is readily apparent in Broken Window Theory (BWT) [ 2 ], as well as in alternative perspectives of disorder involving shared expectation and cohesion—more broadly known as collective efficacy [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]—that are consistent with social disorganisation theory. The current study draws from these various theories and insights into neighbourhood disorder and applies them to hospital settings. At this point, we must make clear our intentions in applying neighbourhood disorder theories to healthcare. It is perilous to expect theories of neighbourhood disorder can be perfectly replicable in an organisational setting, nor do we consider that all elements of the theories are applicable to hospital settings (such as the concept of fear) [ 6 ] . We particularly reject the flawed ramifications of these theories that saw victimisation and blame attributed to individual neighbourhood members. However, here, we consider that concepts from neighbourhood studies may have considerable promise to shed new light on the relationships between the physical and social environments of hospitals on the one hand, and the health, wellbeing and behaviour of staff and patients, on the other [ 7 ] . We begin by reviewing the history and evolution of these theories before considering their application to healthcare.

Broken windows: a theory of disorder in neighbourhoods

Defining disorder

Rethinking disorder: the role of collective efficacy

Applying broken windows theory to healthcare

Disorder in hospitals may include negative deviations, trade-offs or workarounds that manifest continuously in complex, dynamic and time-pressured environments, which can contribute to poor staff outcomes [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. While trade-offs and workarounds occur in every setting, and they may have many benefits including signalling productive flexibility and staff capacity for manoeuvring, they can also represent risk in healthcare. For example, some researchers have shown that small deviations such as violating recommended processes for use of local anaesthesia can be detrimental, potentially even leading to death [ 28 ]. In line with BWT logic, there is evidence to suggest that the physical hospital environment influences the health and wellbeing of staff and patients [ 29 ]. Similarly, evidence shows that social disorder (e.g., bullying, violence) can influence staff in healthcare organisations [ 23 , 30 ]. All of these examples highlight the potential negative perpetuating effects of disorder in healthcare organisations and how disorder may detrimentally affect patients, such as through poor patient safety outcomes (see Fig. 1 [ 7 ]). Despite the elevated interest in BWT, we could find no empirical study of disorder in hospitals, nor any examination of the role of collective efficacy on staff outcomes or patient safety.

Proposed model of disorder in hospitals Source: Churruca, Ellis et al., 2018 [ 7 ]

Aims of the present study

Is there a significant association between hospital disorder (physical disorder, social disorder) and staff outcomes (burnout, job satisfaction)?

Is there a significant association between hospital disorder (physical disorder, social disorder) and patient safety?

What is the function of “collective efficacy” (social cohesion, willingness to intervene) in hospitals? Specifically, does staff collective efficacy mediate the relationship between disorder and outcomes? Figure 2 demonstrates the simplified hypothesised mediation model.

Hypothesised mediation model

Participants and setting

Survey development

The Disorder and Collective Efficacy survey (DaCEs) for hospital staff was developed for the present study based on an extensive review of the BWT literature. An initial pool of items was formed to assess the hypothesised constructs of the DaCEs: Physical disorder (19 items), social disorder (13 items), and collective efficacy, represented by social cohesion (12 items) and willingness to intervene (10 items). Some of the items were adapted from existing scales [ 16 , 24 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], and others were purpose-developed by the research team (see Supplementary File 1 ). Items were modified to make them relevant to a hospital context. All items were answered on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). A panel of experts in healthcare ( n = 10; hospital staff and researchers) reviewed and provided feedback on the wording of items mapping onto each of the hypothesised constructs and checked for possible misinterpretations of questions, instructions and response format. Minor adjustments were made to the initial item pool (see Supplementary File 1 ). The aim was then to refine the item pool to produce a survey that would be short enough to be completed by busy hospital workers, but which has satisfactory psychometric properties.

Staff outcomes

The survey included existing validated scales to measure staff burnout and job satisfaction. Burnout was measured through a 10-item version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. Two subscales of burnout—emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation—were used for the current survey as the third subscale, personal accomplishment, was deemed less relevant to nonclinical staff. Burnout items were answered on a seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). The job satisfaction section of the Job Diagnostic Survey (5 items) was selected to capture individual’s feelings about their job [ 39 ]. Job satisfaction items were answered on a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Patient safety

Data analysis

Descriptive statistics, distribution, reliability and confirmatory factor analysis

Research question 1: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and staff outcomes?

Research question 2: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and patient safety?

Research question 3: does staff collective efficacy mediate the relationship between disorder and outcomes?

Model of disorder and burnout, mediated by collective efficacy

Model of disorder and job satisfaction, mediated by collective efficacy

Model of disorder and patient safety, mediated by collective efficacy

Strengths and limitations

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Broken windows theory

Disorder and Collective Efficacy Survey

Confirmatory factor analysis

Structural equation modelling

Maslach Burnout Inventory

Hospital Survey of Patient Safety Culture

Expectation Maximisation

Tucker Lewis Index

Comparative Fit Index

Root Mean Square Error of Approximation

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LAE, KC, JCL and JB conceived the study. LAE, KC, JCL and CP designed the DaCEs and drafted the paper. LAE, YT and CP performed the analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Ellis, L.A., Churruca, K., Tran, Y. et al. An empirical application of “broken windows” and related theories in healthcare: examining disorder, patient safety, staff outcomes, and collective efficacy in hospitals. BMC Health Serv Res 20 , 1123 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-020-05974-0

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Broken Windows

The police and neighborhood safety

Editor’s Note: We’ve gathered dozens of the most important pieces from our archives on race and racism in America. Find the collection here .

In the mid-1970s The State of New Jersey announced a "Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program," designed to improve the quality of community life in twenty-eight cities. As part of that program, the state provided money to help cities take police officers out of their patrol cars and assign them to walking beats. The governor and other state officials were enthusiastic about using foot patrol as a way of cutting crime, but many police chiefs were skeptical. Foot patrol, in their eyes, had been pretty much discredited. It reduced the mobility of the police, who thus had difficulty responding to citizen calls for service, and it weakened headquarters control over patrol officers.

Many police officers also disliked foot patrol, but for different reasons: it was hard work, it kept them outside on cold, rainy nights, and it reduced their chances for making a "good pinch." In some departments, assigning officers to foot patrol had been used as a form of punishment. And academic experts on policing doubted that foot patrol would have any impact on crime rates; it was, in the opinion of most, little more than a sop to public opinion. But since the state was paying for it, the local authorities were willing to go along.

Five years after the program started, the Police Foundation, in Washington, D.C., published an evaluation of the foot-patrol project. Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and seemed to take fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (staying at home with the doors locked, for example). Moreover, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere. And officers walking beats had higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars.

These findings may be taken as evidence that the skeptics were right- foot patrol has no effect on crime; it merely fools the citizens into thinking that they are safer. But in our view, and in the view of the authors of the Police Foundation study (of whom Kelling was one), the citizens of Newark were not fooled at all. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing, they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knew that having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer.

But how can a neighborhood be "safer" when the crime rate has not gone down—in fact, may have gone up? Finding the answer requires first that we understand what most often frightens people in public places. Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fear—the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.

What foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent they could, the level of public order in these neighborhoods. Though the neighborhoods were predominantly black and the foot patrolmen were mostly white, this "order-maintenance" function of the police was performed to the general satisfaction of both parties.

One of us (Kelling) spent many hours walking with Newark foot-patrol officers to see how they defined "order" and what they did to maintain it. One beat was typical: a busy but dilapidated area in the heart of Newark, with many abandoned buildings, marginal shops (several of which prominently displayed knives and straight-edged razors in their windows), one large department store, and, most important, a train station and several major bus stops. Though the area was run-down, its streets were filled with people, because it was a major transportation center. The good order of this area was important not only to those who lived and worked there but also to many others, who had to move through it on their way home, to supermarkets, or to factories.

The people on the street were primarily black; the officer who walked the street was white. The people were made up of "regulars" and "strangers." Regulars included both "decent folk" and some drunks and derelicts who were always there but who "knew their place." Strangers were, well, strangers, and viewed suspiciously, sometimes apprehensively. The officer—call him Kelly—knew who the regulars were, and they knew him. As he saw his job, he was to keep an eye on strangers, and make certain that the disreputable regulars observed some informal but widely understood rules. Drunks and addicts could sit on the stoops, but could not lie down. People could drink on side streets, but not at the main intersection. Bottles had to be in paper bags. Talking to, bothering, or begging from people waiting at the bus stop was strictly forbidden. If a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right, especially if the customer was a stranger. If a stranger loitered, Kelly would ask him if he had any means of support and what his business was; if he gave unsatisfactory answers, he was sent on his way. Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those who bothered people waiting at bus stops, were arrested for vagrancy. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.

These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the "regulars" on the street. Another neighborhood might have different rules, but these, everybody understood, were the rules for this neighborhood. If someone violated them, the regulars not only turned to Kelly for help but also ridiculed the violator. Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as "enforcing the law," but just as often it involved taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order. Some of the things he did probably would not withstand a legal challenge.

A determined skeptic might acknowledge that a skilled foot-patrol officer can maintain order but still insist that this sort of "order" has little to do with the real sources of community fear—that is, with violent crime. To a degree, that is true. But two things must be borne in mind. First, outside observers should not assume that they know how much of the anxiety now endemic in many big-city neighborhoods stems from a fear of "real" crime and how much from a sense that the street is disorderly, a source of distasteful, worrisome encounters. The people of Newark, to judge from their behavior and their remarks to interviewers, apparently assign a high value to public order, and feel relieved and reassured when the police help them maintain that order.

Second, at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments 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 a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by "vandals" within ten minutes of its "abandonment." The first to arrive were a family—father, mother, and young son—who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began—windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult "vandals" were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the "vandals" appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder and even for people who ordinarily would not dream of doing such things and who probably consider themselves law-abiding. Because of the nature of community life in the Bronx—its anonymity, the frequency with which cars are abandoned and things are stolen or broken, the past experience of "no one caring"—vandalism begins much more quickly than it does in staid Palo Alto, where people have come to believe that private possessions are cared for, and that mischievous behavior is costly. But 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."

We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don't get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.

Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion. Though it is not inevitable, it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys who do it as a lark, and the prostitutes' customers will be robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently. That muggings will occur.

Among those who often find it difficult to move away from this are the elderly. Surveys of citizens suggest that the elderly are much less likely to be the victims of crime than younger persons, and some have inferred from this that the well-known fear of crime voiced by the elderly is an exaggeration: perhaps we ought not to design special programs to protect older persons; perhaps we should even try to talk them out of their mistaken fears. This argument misses the point. The prospect of a confrontation with an obstreperous teenager or a drunken panhandler can be as fear-inducing for defenseless persons as the prospect of meeting an actual robber; indeed, to a defenseless person, the two kinds of confrontation are often indistinguishable. Moreover, the lower rate at which the elderly are victimized is a measure of the steps they have already taken—chiefly, staying behind locked doors—to minimize the risks they face. Young men are more frequently attacked than older women, not because they are easier or more lucrative targets but because they are on the streets more.

Nor is the connection between disorderliness and fear made only by the elderly. Susan Estrich, of the Harvard Law School, has recently gathered together a number of surveys on the sources of public fear. One, done in Portland, Oregon, indicated that three fourths of the adults interviewed cross to the other side of a street when they see a gang of teenagers; another survey, in Baltimore, discovered that nearly half would cross the street to avoid even a single strange youth. When an interviewer asked people in a housing project where the most dangerous spot was, they mentioned a place where young persons gathered to drink and play music, despite the fact that not a single crime had occurred there. In Boston public housing projects, the greatest fear was expressed by persons living in the buildings where disorderliness and incivility, not crime, were the greatest. Knowing this helps one understand the significance of such otherwise harmless displays as subway graffiti. As Nathan Glazer has written, the proliferation of graffiti, even when not obscene, confronts the subway rider with the inescapable knowledge that the environment he must endure for an hour or more a day is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and that anyone can invade it to do whatever damage and mischief the mind suggests."

In response to fear people avoid one another, weakening controls. Sometimes they call the police. Patrol cars arrive, an occasional arrest occurs but crime continues and disorder is not abated. Citizens complain to the police chief, but he explains that his department is low on personnel and that the courts do not punish petty or first-time offenders. To the residents, the police who arrive in squad cars are either ineffective or uncaring: to the police, the residents are animals who deserve each other. The citizens may soon stop calling the police, because "they can't do anything."

The process we call urban decay has occurred for centuries in every city. But what is happening today is different in at least two important respects. First, in the period before, say, World War II, city dwellers- because of money costs, transportation difficulties, familial and church connections—could rarely move away from neighborhood problems. When movement did occur, it tended to be along public-transit routes. Now mobility has become exceptionally easy for all but the poorest or those who are blocked by racial prejudice. Earlier crime waves had a kind of built-in self-correcting mechanism: the determination of a neighborhood or community to reassert control over its turf. Areas in Chicago, New York, and Boston would experience crime and gang wars, and then normalcy would return, as the families for whom no alternative residences were possible reclaimed their authority over the streets.

Second, the police in this earlier period assisted in that reassertion of authority by acting, sometimes violently, on behalf of the community. Young toughs were roughed up, people were arrested "on suspicion" or for vagrancy, and prostitutes and petty thieves were routed. "Rights" were something enjoyed by decent folk, and perhaps also by the serious professional criminal, who avoided violence and could afford a lawyer.

This pattern of policing was not an aberration or the result of occasional excess. From the earliest days of the nation, the police function was seen primarily as that of a night watchman: to maintain order against the chief threats to order—fire, wild animals, and disreputable behavior. Solving crimes was viewed not as a police responsibility but as a private one. In the March, 1969, Atlantic, one of us (Wilson) wrote a brief account of how the police role had slowly changed from maintaining order to fighting crimes. The change began with the creation of private detectives (often ex-criminals), who worked on a contingency-fee basis for individuals who had suffered losses. In time, the detectives were absorbed in municipal agencies and paid a regular salary simultaneously, the responsibility for prosecuting thieves was shifted from the aggrieved private citizen to the professional prosecutor. This process was not complete in most places until the twentieth century.

In the l960s, when urban riots were a major problem, social scientists began to explore carefully the order maintenance function of the police, and to suggest ways of improving it—not to make streets safer (its original function) but to reduce the incidence of mass violence. Order maintenance became, to a degree, coterminous with "community relations." But, as the crime wave that began in the early l960s continued without abatement throughout the decade and into the 1970s, attention shifted to the role of the police as crime-fighters. Studies of police behavior ceased, by and large, to be accounts of the order-maintenance function and became, instead, efforts to propose and test ways whereby the police could solve more crimes, make more arrests, and gather better evidence. If these things could be done, social scientists assumed, citizens would be less fearful.

A great deal was accomplished during this transition, as both police chiefs and outside experts emphasized the crime-fighting function in their plans, in the allocation of resources, and in deployment of personnel. The police may well have become better crime-fighters as a result. And doubtless they remained aware of their responsibility for order. But the link between order-maintenance and crime-prevention, so obvious to earlier generations, was forgotten.

Is Stop-and-Frisk Worth It?

Calling Someone Other Than the Cops

The Con Man Who Became a True-Crime Writer

That link is similar to the process whereby one broken window becomes many. The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization—namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place.

Some police administrators concede that this process occurs, but argue that motorized-patrol officers can deal with it as effectively as foot patrol officers. We are not so sure. In theory, an officer in a squad car can observe as much as an officer on foot; in theory, the former can talk to as many people as the latter. But the reality of police-citizen encounters is powerfully altered by the automobile. An officer on foot cannot separate himself from the street people; if he is approached, only his uniform and his personality can help him manage whatever is about to happen. And he can never be certain what that will be—a request for directions, a plea for help, an angry denunciation, a teasing remark, a confused babble, a threatening gesture.

In a car, an officer is more likely to deal with street people by rolling down the window and looking at them. The door and the window exclude the approaching citizen; they are a barrier. Some officers take advantage of this barrier, perhaps unconsciously, by acting differently if in the car than they would on foot. We have seen this countless times. The police car pulls up to a corner where teenagers are gathered. The window is rolled down. The officer stares at the youths. They stare back. The officer says to one, "C'mere." He saunters over, conveying to his friends by his elaborately casual style the idea that he is not intimidated by authority. What's your name?" "Chuck." "Chuck who?" "Chuck Jones." "What'ya doing, Chuck?" "Nothin'." "Got a P.O. [parole officer]?" "Nah." "Sure?" "Yeah." "Stay out of trouble, Chuckie." Meanwhile, the other boys laugh and exchange comments among themselves, probably at the officer's expense. The officer stares harder. He cannot be certain what is being said, nor can he join in and, by displaying his own skill at street banter, prove that he cannot be "put down." In the process, the officer has learned almost nothing, and the boys have decided the officer is an alien force who can safely be disregarded, even mocked.

Our experience is that most citizens like to talk to a police officer. Such exchanges give them a sense of importance, provide them with the basis for gossip, and allow them to explain to the authorities what is worrying them (whereby they gain a modest but significant sense of having "done something" about the problem). You approach a person on foot more easily, and talk to him more readily, than you do a person in a car. Moreover, you can more easily retain some anonymity if you draw an officer aside for a private chat. Suppose you want to pass on a tip about who is stealing handbags, or who offered to sell you a stolen TV. In the inner city, the culprit, in all likelihood, lives nearby. To walk up to a marked patrol car and lean in the window is to convey a visible signal that you are a "fink."

The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces the police must accommodate them. And therein lies the problem.

Should police activity on the street be shaped, in important ways, by the standards of the neighborhood rather than by the rules of the state? Over the past two decades, the shift of police from order-maintenance to law enforcement has brought them increasingly under the influence of legal restrictions, provoked by media complaints and enforced by court decisions and departmental orders. As a consequence, the order maintenance functions of the police are now governed by rules developed to control police relations with suspected criminals. This is, we think, an entirely new development. For centuries, the role of the police as watchmen was judged primarily not in terms of its compliance with appropriate procedures but rather in terms of its attaining a desired objective. The objective was order, an inherently ambiguous term but a condition that people in a given community recognized when they saw it. The means were the same as those the community itself would employ, if its members were sufficiently determined, courageous, and authoritative. Detecting and apprehending criminals, by contrast, was a means to an end, not an end in itself; a judicial determination of guilt or innocence was the hoped-for result of the law-enforcement mode. From the first, the police were expected to follow rules defining that process, though states differed in how stringent the rules should be. The criminal-apprehension process was always understood to involve individual rights, the violation of which was unacceptable because it meant that the violating officer would be acting as a judge and jury—and that was not his job. Guilt or innocence was to be determined by universal standards under special procedures.

Ordinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order. That is true not only because most cases are handled informally on the street but also because no universal standards are available to settle arguments over disorder, and thus a judge may not be any wiser or more effective than a police officer. Until quite recently in many states, and even today in some places, the police made arrests on such charges as "suspicious person" or "vagrancy" or "public drunkenness"—charges with scarcely any legal meaning. These charges exist not because society wants judges to punish vagrants or drunks but because it wants an officer to have the legal tools to remove undesirable persons from a neighborhood when informal efforts to preserve order in the streets have failed.

Once we begin to think of all aspects of police work as involving the application of universal rules under special procedures, we inevitably ask what constitutes an "undesirable person" and why we should "criminalize" vagrancy or drunkenness. A strong and commendable desire to see that people are treated fairly makes us worry about allowing the police to rout persons who are undesirable by some vague or parochial standard. A growing and not-so-commendable utilitarianism leads us to doubt that any behavior that does not "hurt" another person should be made illegal. And thus many of us who watch over the police are reluctant to allow them to perform, in the only way they can, a function that every neighborhood desperately wants them to perform.

This wish to "decriminalize" disreputable behavior that "harms no one"- and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order—is, we think, a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community. A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows. Of course, agencies other than the police could attend to the problems posed by drunks or the mentally ill, but in most communities especially where the "deinstitutionalization" movement has been strong—they do not.

The concern about equity is more serious. We might agree that certain behavior makes one person more undesirable than another but how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry?

We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this—the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood.

Consider the case of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, one of the largest public-housing projects in the country. It is home for nearly 20,000 people, all black, and extends over ninety-two acres along South State Street. It was named after a distinguished black who had been, during the 1940s, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. Not long after it opened, in 1962, relations between project residents and the police deteriorated badly. The citizens felt that the police were insensitive or brutal; the police, in turn, complained of unprovoked attacks on them. Some Chicago officers tell of times when they were afraid to enter the Homes. Crime rates soared.

Today, the atmosphere has changed. Police-citizen relations have improved—apparently, both sides learned something from the earlier experience. Recently, a boy stole a purse and ran off. Several young persons who saw the theft voluntarily passed along to the police information on the identity and residence of the thief, and they did this publicly, with friends and neighbors looking on. But problems persist, chief among them the presence of youth gangs that terrorize residents and recruit members in the project. The people expect the police to "do something" about this, and the police are determined to do just that.

But do what? Though the police can obviously make arrests whenever a gang member breaks the law, a gang can form, recruit, and congregate without breaking the law. And only a tiny fraction of gang-related crimes can be solved by an arrest; thus, if an arrest is the only recourse for the police, the residents' fears will go unassuaged. The police will soon feel helpless, and the residents will again believe that the police "do nothing." What the police in fact do is to chase known gang members out of the project. In the words of one officer, "We kick ass." Project residents both know and approve of this. The tacit police-citizen alliance in the project is reinforced by the police view that the cops and the gangs are the two rival sources of power in the area, and that the gangs are not going to win.

None of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process or fair treatment. Since both residents and gang members are black, race is not a factor. But it could be. Suppose a white project confronted a black gang, or vice versa. We would be apprehensive about the police taking sides. But the substantive problem remains the same: how can the police strengthen the informal social-control mechanisms of natural communities in order to minimize fear in public places? Law enforcement, per se, is no answer: a gang can weaken or destroy a community by standing about in a menacing fashion and speaking rudely to passersby without breaking the law.

We have difficulty thinking about such matters, not simply because the ethical and legal issues are so complex but because we have become accustomed to thinking of the law in essentially individualistic terms. The law defines my rights, punishes his behavior and is applied by that officer because of this harm. We assume, in thinking this way, that what is good for the individual will be good for the community and what doesn't matter when it happens to one person won't matter if it happens to many. Ordinarily, those are plausible assumptions. But in cases where behavior that is tolerable to one person is intolerable to many others, the reactions of the others—fear, withdrawal, flight—may ultimately make matters worse for everyone, including the individual who first professed his indifference.

It may be their greater sensitivity to communal as opposed to individual needs that helps explain why the residents of small communities are more satisfied with their police than are the residents of similar neighborhoods in big cities. Elinor Ostrom and her co-workers at Indiana University compared the perception of police services in two poor, all-black Illinois towns—Phoenix and East Chicago Heights with those of three comparable all-black neighborhoods in Chicago. The level of criminal victimization and the quality of police-community relations appeared to be about the same in the towns and the Chicago neighborhoods. But the citizens living in their own villages were much more likely than those living in the Chicago neighborhoods to say that they do not stay at home for fear of crime, to agree that the local police have "the right to take any action necessary" to deal with problems, and to agree that the police "look out for the needs of the average citizen." It is possible that the residents and the police of the small towns saw themselves as engaged in a collaborative effort to maintain a certain standard of communal life, whereas those of the big city felt themselves to be simply requesting and supplying particular services on an individual basis.

If this is true, how should a wise police chief deploy his meager forces? The first answer is that nobody knows for certain, and the most prudent course of action would be to try further variations on the Newark experiment, to see more precisely what works in what kinds of neighborhoods. The second answer is also a hedge—many aspects of order maintenance in neighborhoods can probably best be handled in ways that involve the police minimally if at all. A busy bustling shopping center and a quiet, well-tended suburb may need almost no visible police presence. In both cases, the ratio of respectable to disreputable people is ordinarily so high as to make informal social control effective.

Even in areas that are in jeopardy from disorderly elements, citizen action without substantial police involvement may be sufficient. Meetings between teenagers who like to hang out on a particular corner and adults who want to use that corner might well lead to an amicable agreement on a set of rules about how many people can be allowed to congregate, where, and when.

Where no understanding is possible—or if possible, not observed—citizen patrols may be a sufficient response. There are two traditions of communal involvement in maintaining order: One, that of the "community watchmen," is as old as the first settlement of the New World. Until well into the nineteenth century, volunteer watchmen, not policemen, patrolled their communities to keep order. They did so, by and large, without taking the law into their own hands—without, that is, punishing persons or using force. Their presence deterred disorder or alerted the community to disorder that could not be deterred. There are hundreds of such efforts today in communities all across the nation. Perhaps the best known is that of the Guardian Angels, a group of unarmed young persons in distinctive berets and T-shirts, who first came to public attention when they began patrolling the New York City subways but who claim now to have chapters in more than thirty American cities. Unfortunately, we have little information about the effect of these groups on crime. It is possible, however, that whatever their effect on crime, citizens find their presence reassuring, and that they thus contribute to maintaining a sense of order and civility.

The second tradition is that of the "vigilante." Rarely a feature of the settled communities of the East, it was primarily to be found in those frontier towns that grew up in advance of the reach of government. More than 350 vigilante groups are known to have existed; their distinctive feature was that their members did take the law into their own hands, by acting as judge, jury, and often executioner as well as policeman. Today, the vigilante movement is conspicuous by its rarity, despite the great fear expressed by citizens that the older cities are becoming "urban frontiers." But some community-watchmen groups have skirted the line, and others may cross it in the future. An ambiguous case, reported in The Wall Street Journal involved a citizens' patrol in the Silver Lake area of Belleville, New Jersey. A leader told the reporter, "We look for outsiders." If a few teenagers from outside the neighborhood enter it, "we ask them their business," he said. "If they say they're going down the street to see Mrs. Jones, fine, we let them pass. But then we follow them down the block to make sure they're really going to see Mrs. Jones."

Though citizens can do a great deal, the police are plainly the key to order maintenance. For one thing, many communities, such as the Robert Taylor Homes, cannot do the job by themselves. For another, no citizen in a neighborhood, even an organized one, is likely to feel the sense of responsibility that wearing a badge confers. Psychologists have done many studies on why people fail to go to the aid of persons being attacked or seeking help, and they have learned that the cause is not "apathy" or "selfishness" but the absence of some plausible grounds for feeling that one must personally accept responsibility. Ironically, avoiding responsibility is easier when a lot of people are standing about. On streets and in public places, where order is so important, many people are likely to be "around," a fact that reduces the chance of any one person acting as the agent of the community. The police officer's uniform singles him out as a person who must accept responsibility if asked. In addition, officers, more easily than their fellow citizens, can be expected to distinguish between what is necessary to protect the safety of the street and what merely protects its ethnic purity.

But the police forces of America are losing, not gaining, members. Some cities have suffered substantial cuts in the number of officers available for duty. These cuts are not likely to be reversed in the near future. Therefore, each department must assign its existing officers with great care. Some neighborhoods are so demoralized and crime-ridden as to make foot patrol useless; the best the police can do with limited resources is respond to the enormous number of calls for service. Other neighborhoods are so stable and serene as to make foot patrol unnecessary. The key is to identify neighborhoods at the tipping point—where the public order is deteriorating but not unreclaimable, where the streets are used frequently but by apprehensive people, where a window is likely to be broken at any time, and must quickly be fixed if all are not to be shattered.

Most police departments do not have ways of systematically identifying such areas and assigning officers to them. Officers are assigned on the basis of crime rates (meaning that marginally threatened areas are often stripped so that police can investigate crimes in areas where the situation is hopeless) or on the basis of calls for service (despite the fact that most citizens do not call the police when they are merely frightened or annoyed). To allocate patrol wisely, the department must look at the neighborhoods and decide, from first-hand evidence, where an additional officer will make the greatest difference in promoting a sense of safety.

One way to stretch limited police resources is being tried in some public housing projects. Tenant organizations hire off-duty police officers for patrol work in their buildings. The costs are not high (at least not per resident), the officer likes the additional income, and the residents feel safer. Such arrangements are probably more successful than hiring private watchmen, and the Newark experiment helps us understand why. A private security guard may deter crime or misconduct by his presence, and he may go to the aid of persons needing help, but he may well not intervene—that is, control or drive away—someone challenging community standards. Being a sworn officer—a "real cop"—seems to give one the confidence, the sense of duty, and the aura of authority necessary to perform this difficult task.

Patrol officers might be encouraged to go to and from duty stations on public transportation and, while on the bus or subway car, enforce rules about smoking, drinking, disorderly conduct, and the like. The enforcement need involve nothing more than ejecting the offender (the offense, after all, is not one with which a booking officer or a judge wishes to be bothered). Perhaps the random but relentless maintenance of standards on buses would lead to conditions on buses that approximate the level of civility we now take for granted on airplanes.

But the most important requirement is to think that to maintain order in precarious situations is a vital job. The police know this is one of their functions, and they also believe, correctly, that it cannot be done to the exclusion of criminal investigation and responding to calls. We may have encouraged them to suppose, however, on the basis of our oft-repeated concerns about serious, violent crime, that they will be judged exclusively on their capacity as crime-fighters. To the extent that this is the case, police administrators will continue to concentrate police personnel in the highest-crime areas (though not necessarily in the areas most vulnerable to criminal invasion), emphasize their training in the law and criminal apprehension (and not their training in managing street life), and join too quickly in campaigns to decriminalize "harmless" behavior (though public drunkenness, street prostitution, and pornographic displays can destroy a community more quickly than any team of professional burglars).

Above all, we must return to our long-abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police—and the rest of us—ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows.

Fixing Broken Windows Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities

About the book.

When sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling introduced their “Broken Windows” thesis in 1982, it gained immediate attention from academics and policy makers alike. “Broken Windows” finally acknowledged the connection between disorder, fear, crime, and urban decay that has been playing out in America’s cities for decades. Kelling, an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has co-authored his latest book, Fixing Broken Windows , with Catherine M. Coles, a lawyer and urban anthropologist. In it they explain in detail their prescription for solving the pervasive problems of crime and decay in our nation’s urban centers: control disorderly behavior in public places generally and a significant drop in serious crime will follow.

Rather than relying on the commonly cited, often politicized “solutions” of the day (a tough death penalty, more prisons, “three-strikes-you’re-out”), Kelling and Coles offer fresh new strategies for restoring order to our communities. Indeed, they challenge the very tenets of modern law enforcement orthodoxy, suggesting that police get out of their cars and into the neighborhoods in partnership with private citizens and local civic organizations. Instead of reacting to crime, Fixing Broken Windows champions crime prevention.

But it is not a passive, “midnight basketball” approach to prevention. Kelling and Coles advocate an aggressive, get-tough confrontation of public disorder in its various forms: vagrancy, vandalism, panhandling, etc. Their approach worked in New York City’s subways, where felonies have fallen by 75% in the 1990s, and all across New York City as former Police Chief William Bratton implemented many of Kelling’s and Coles’ policy recommendations.

As Mayor Rudolph Giuliani enters his 1997 reelection campaign, his outstanding record on crime may be the Mayor’s strongest asset in a contest many expect him to win. Across the nation, from San Francisco to Seattle to New Haven, cities have been implementing the Fixing Broken Windows approach to crimefighting and meeting with tremendous success. The impact of Kelling’s and Coles’ ideas will only multiply exponentially as Fixing Broken Windows gains national recognition.

About the Authors

George L. Kelling , an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, was a key member of the New York City Transit Police Team that worked to clean up the New York City subway system. He earned his doctorate in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a Professor at Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, as well as an Adjunct Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kelling has also consulted on crime prevention projects in numerous cities including Newark, Kansas City, Seattle, San Francisco, and Baltimore.

Catherine M. Coles is a research associate in the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Dr. Coles earned her J.D. from Boston College Law School and her M.A./Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Wisconsin. Her research interests lie in constitutional and criminal law, prosecution, the courts, and public policy related to these areas.

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You can see the broken window theory in action in your own life or
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COMMENTS

Broken windows theory
In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, antisocial behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, loitering, public drinking and fare evasion help to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness.
Broken windows theory
Broken windows theory is an academic theory that links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent serious crime. Learn about its origin, application, and challenges from Britannica's article.
Broken windows thesis
A sociological theory that links disorderly behaviour to crime and urban decay in American cities. It advocates for community policing and zero tolerance of minor public disorders to prevent serious crimes.
Broken Windows Theory of Policing (Wilson & Kelling)
Learn about the broken windows theory, which suggests that visible signs of disorder and neglect can encourage crime and anti-social behavior. Find out how this theory is applied in policing, its examples, criticisms, and limitations.
Reimagining Broken Windows: From Theory to Policy
It is important at this juncture to note that the term broken windows has been associated with a wide range of nouns, including thesis, idea, perspective, theory, and approach. In some respects this may be fitting, reflecting the evolution of the term and its many interpretations in the scientific as well as policy and practitioner communities.
Broken Windows Theory
Learn about the broken windows theory, which argues that low-level crime and disorder can lead to more serious crime and social breakdown. Find out how it influenced policy in New York and its critics.
Broken Windows Thesis
The broken windows thesis suggests that police could prevent crime by focusing on minor disorder problems in communities. Learn about the theory's development, research, and policy impact from this reference work entry.
Broken Windows, Informal Social Control, and Crime: Assessing Causality
Broken Windows Theory. Wilson & Kelling's (1982) broken windows thesis posits that disorder and crime are causally linked in a developmental sequence in which unchecked disorder spreads and promotes crime. Both physical disorder (e.g., abandoned buildings, graffiti, and litter) and social disorder (e.g., panhandlers, homeless, unsupervised youths) exert causal effects on crime directly and ...
Broken Windows Theory
The broken windows theory states that visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes. The principle was developed ...
Reimagining Broken Windows: From Theory to Policy
It describes the core concepts of the broken windows perspective, examines its theoretical underpinnings, and sets out priorities for future research and policy development. Important advancements have been made in the intellectual development and programmatic application of the broken windows perspective over the last 30 years.
Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying Broken Windows Policing: The
"The Relationship between Disorder, Perceived Risk and Collective Efficacy: A Look into the Indirect Pathways of the Broken Windows Thesis." Criminal Justice Studies 4:408-32. Crossref. Google Scholar. Hinkle J. C., Weisburd D. 2008. "The Irony of Broken Windows Policing: A Micro-place Study of the Relationship between Disorder, Focused ...
Broken Windows Theory
The broken windows theory originated from a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article of the same name written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They postulated that broken windows and other unchecked social and physical disorder are direct antecedents to criminal behavior. The article led to the development of popular broken windows policing or zero-tolerance policing strategies that targeted minor ...
An empirical application of "broken windows" and related theories in
Background. A long tradition exists in criminology and social-psychology research on the concept of neighbourhood disorder and in what ways disorder relates to anti-social behaviour and poor outcomes []. Interest in neighbourhood disorder is readily apparent in Broken Window Theory (BWT) [], as well as in alternative perspectives of disorder involving shared expectation and cohesion—more ...
Broken Windows Theory
The broken windows theory originated from a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article of the same name written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They postulated that broken windows and other unchecked social and physical disorder are direct antecedents to criminal behavior. The article led to the development of popular broken windows policing or zero ...
Broken Windows Theory: An Evaluation
The Broken Windows Theory posits that physical disorder like litter and vandalism can lead to higher crime rates, with informal social control methods seen as effective remedies. Evidence is mixed; a 2008 experiment found increased deviant behaviour in untidy environments, while a 2015 meta-analysis supported disorder-focused community interventions as crime reducers. However, a study on the ...
What is Broken Windows Theory?
Broken Windows Theory originated from a 1982 article in Atlantic Monthly written by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. The basic idea was that when there is some form of environmental decay, such as broken windows, it gives the impression that the neighbourhood or area is uncared for ... His thesis focuses on a range of concepts including ...
An empirical application of "broken windows" and related theories in
Broken windows theory (BWT) proposes that visible signs of crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour - however minor - lead to further levels of crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour. While we acknowledge divisive and controversial policy developments that were based on BWT, theories of neighbourhood disorder have recently been proposed to have utility in healthcare, emphasising the ...
Broken Windows and Collective Efficacy
Broken Windows Thesis and Collective Efficacy. A long tradition exists in the criminological research on the visual conditions of neighborhoods and the relationship between these visual cues and deviance. Through the decades, variations in crime rates across neighborhoods have resulted in the growing research on the neighborhood effects; that ...
Broken Windows
The first to arrive were a family—father, mother, and young son—who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random ...
Fixing Broken Windows
When sociologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling introduced their "Broken Windows" thesis in 1982, it gained immediate attention from academics and policy makers alike. "Broken Windows" finally acknowledged the connection between disorder, fear, crime, and urban decay that has been playing out in America's cities for decades. Kelling, an Adjunct Fellow at the […]
Zero-tolerance policing
Broken windows theory is often mentioned in connection with ZTP (Kelling and Wilson, 1982). ... 'The relationship between disorder, perceived risk, and collective efﬁcacy: a look into the indirect pathways of the broken windows thesis'. Criminal Justice Studies, 26(4), pp 408-432. Kelling G and Sousa W. (2001). 'Do Police Matter? An Analysis ...
Broken Windows and Collective Efficacy:
The broken windows thesis posits that signs of disorder increase crime and fear, both directly and indirectly. Although considerable theoretical evidence exists to support the idea that disorder is positively related to fear of crime, the empirical literature on examining the indirect effect of the individual's perception of incivilities on fear of crime is limited, especially in developing ...
(PDF) Broken Windows and Collective Efficacy
The broken windows thesis posits that signs of disorder increase crime and fear, both directly and indirectly. Although considerable theoretical evidence exists to support the idea that disorder ...

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Broken Windows Theory of Criminology

Key Takeaways

What Is the Broken Windows Theory?

Examples of Broken Windows Policing

1982: Kelling and Wilson’s Follow-Up Article

Early 1990s: Bratton and Giuliani’s implementation in NYC

Late 1990s: Albuquerque’s Safe Streets Program

2005: Lowell, Massachusetts

2007: Netherlands

2008: Tokyo, Japan

Other Domains Relevant to Broken Windows

Major Criticisms

Misinterpreting the Relationship Between Disorder and Crime

Falsely Assuming Why Crimes Are Committed

Resulting in Racial and Class Bias

Morphing into Stop and Frisk

What is the broken glass principle?

How does social context affect crime according to the broken windows theory?

How did broken windows theory change policing?

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Broken Windows Theory

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Broken Windows Theory

An empirical application of “broken windows” and related theories in healthcare: examining disorder, patient safety, staff outcomes, and collective efficacy in hospitals

Kate Churruca

Conclusions

Supplementary Information

Broken windows: a theory of disorder in neighbourhoods

Defining disorder

Rethinking disorder: the role of collective efficacy

Applying broken windows theory to healthcare

Aims of the present study

Participants and setting

Survey development

Staff outcomes

Patient safety

Data analysis

Descriptive statistics, distribution, reliability and confirmatory factor analysis

Research question 1: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and staff outcomes?

Research question 2: is there a significant association between hospital disorder and patient safety?

Research question 3: does staff collective efficacy mediate the relationship between disorder and outcomes?

Strengths and limitations

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Availability of data and materials

Consent for publication

Competing interests

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Broken Windows Theory: An Evaluation

Broken Windows Theory: Supporting Evidence

Meta Analysis supports Broken Windows Theory

Evidence not supporting Broken Windows Theory

The problems with evaluating Broken Windows Theory

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