What is broken windows theory?
Broken windows theory starts with a simple image: if one broken window in a building is left unrepaired, the rest will soon be broken too. Wilson and Kelling argued that minor disorder, such as graffiti, public drinking, aggressive panhandling and litter, tells residents and offenders that no one cares. Law-abiding people withdraw from the streets, informal social control weakens, and more serious crime moves in.
📌 At a glance
- Introduced by
- James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, "Broken Windows," *The Atlantic* (1982)
- Inspired by
- Philip Zimbardo’s abandoned car experiment (1969)
- Core claim
- Managing small disorder helps prevent serious crime
- Best-known application
- New York City’s subway and NYPD in the 1980s and 1990s
Zimbardo’s abandoned car experiment
In 1969, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo left two cars without license plates and with their hoods up on streets in the Bronx and in Palo Alto.
- In the Bronx, people began stripping the car within minutes, and within a day anything of value was gone.
- In Palo Alto, the car sat untouched for more than a week.
- Then Zimbardo smashed part of the car with a sledgehammer, and passersby soon joined in.
Wilson and Kelling used the study to argue that once disorder appears, vandalism can spread even in orderly neighborhoods.
New York City
- Subway graffiti (from 1984): the New York City Transit Authority, advised by Kelling, pulled graffiti-covered cars from service and cleaned them immediately. By 1989 the subway was essentially graffiti-free.
- Fare evasion (from 1990): Transit Police chief William Bratton cracked down on turnstile jumping and found many offenders carrying weapons or wanted on warrants.
- NYPD-wide (from 1994): Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Commissioner Bratton expanded quality-of-life enforcement, and murders and robberies fell sharply during the decade.
Whether broken windows policing caused New York’s crime drop is still debated. Crime also fell in other big U.S. cities that used very different strategies.
Research and criticism
- Mixed evidence on serious crime: Harcourt and Ludwig (2006) reanalyzed New York data and found little support for the claim that misdemeanor arrests drove the decline in violent crime.
- Civil rights: aggressive "zero tolerance" enforcement was linked to stop-and-frisk practices that fell heavily on Black and Latino residents. In *Floyd v. City of New York* (2013), a federal judge ruled the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional.
- Support from field experiments: Keizer, Lindenberg and Steg (2008), publishing in *Science*, found that in a Dutch alley with graffiti, the share of people who littered a flyer rose from 33% to 69%.
- Meta-analysis: Braga, Welsh and Schnell (2015) found that disorder policing can reduce crime, but community problem-solving approaches worked better than aggressive arrest-focused tactics.
Beyond policing
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| City management | Fixing streetlights, boarding up vacant homes, removing graffiti fast, CPTED design |
| Business | Keeping stores clean and fixing small customer complaints before trust erodes |
| Classrooms | Responding consistently to small rule-breaking |
| Software | Fixing small bugs and messy code before technical debt piles up |
For related criminology, see routine activity theory and labeling theory.
Frequently asked questions
- Who created broken windows theory?
- Political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George L. Kelling, in their 1982 article in The Atlantic.
- Does broken windows policing work?
- Research suggests addressing disorder can reduce some crime, especially through community problem-solving, but evidence that mass misdemeanor arrests cut violent crime is weak.
- Is broken windows the same as zero tolerance?
- No. Zero tolerance is one aggressive interpretation. Kelling himself emphasized discretion and working with communities rather than arresting as many people as possible.
References
- Wilson, J. Q., & Kelling, G. L. (1982, March). Broken windows: The police and neighborhood safety. The Atlantic Monthly, 29–38. (theatlantic.com)
- Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237–307.
- Kelling, G. L., & Coles, C. M. (1996). Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. Free Press.
- Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2008). The spreading of disorder. Science, 322(5908), 1681–1685.
- Harcourt, B. E., & Ludwig, J. (2006). Broken windows: New evidence from New York City and a five-city social experiment. University of Chicago Law Review, 73(1), 271–320.
- Braga, A. A., Welsh, B. C., & Schnell, C. (2015). Can policing disorder reduce crime? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 52(4), 567–588.