Police Admin In The 21st Century
Professor Rhoads
Broken Windows
The broken windows theory has been a controversial method amongst the community and the police department. The question is, what is the broken windows theory? The broken windows theory is based on the notion that a simple “broken window” visibly neglected will only lead to an escalation of crimes in the community. For example, by leaving a wall tagged up with graffiti, rather than restoring the wall to it’s original state, will only invite the offenders to commit worse crimes in the community seeing that this minor offense was ignored and their actions left without consequence. The experiment done by Philip Zimbardo, which was mentioned in the article, shows a clear picture of what one broken window can do to a community. By displaying a sense of “not caring”, mischief and criminality will spike. The broken windows theory has served as an instrumental, innovative and insightful tool in community policing. There are also critics who claim the broken windows theory is unjustifiable in terms of racial inequality since they believe it is targeted to blacks and latinos and it focuses on minor crimes rather than major crimes. In the experiment done by Philip Zimbardo, the majority of the wrong doers were actually white. In my opinion, major crimes can be prevented by nipping the smaller crimes in the bud as soon as they emerge. For example, a group of underage teens in an empty parking lot drinking beer see two cops on patrol who bypass them and don’t address this minor, yet illegal offense, will see it as an opportunity. Now this has made it clear to these kids that the parking lot is a safe hangout spot which may later on be a hotspot for additional criminal activity such as smoking weed or any illegal substance which will lead to perhaps breaking in to a convenience store to obtain more beer or rob an innocent law abiding citizen to obtain funds for drug purchases. If the officers on patrol would have dispersed the group and perhaps asked for identification or called the minors parents to inform them of their wrong doing, it would have avoided any further escalation of criminal activity in the community. I do not believe broken windows policing is detrimental to the community, if anything it is proactive and extremely beneficial to the community, city, state and nation. This article displays the extreme necessity of strong community policing and the importance of not only reacting to crimes but taking proactive measures to prevent crime from occurring all together.
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