broken windows thesis simple definition

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.

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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.

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.

Braga, A. A., & Bond, B. J. (2008). Policing crime and disorder hot spots: A randomized controlled trial. Criminology, 46(3), 577-607.

Dunn, C., & Shames, M. (2020). Stop-and-Frisk data . Retrieved from https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data

Fagan, J., & Davies, G. (2000). Street stops and broken windows: Terry, race, and disorder in New York City. Fordham Urb. LJ , 28, 457.

Harcourt, B. E. (2009). Illusion of order: The false promise of broken windows policing . Harvard University Press.

Harcourt, B. E., & Ludwig, J. (2006). Broken windows: New evidence from New York City and a five-city social experiment. U. Chi. L. Rev., 73 , 271.

Herbert, S., & Brown, E. (2006). Conceptions of space and crime in the punitive neoliberal city. Antipode, 38 (4), 755-777.

Hunt, B. (2015). “Broken Windows” theory can be applied to real estate regulation- Realty Times. Retrieved from https://realtytimes.com/agentnews/agentadvice/item/40700-20151208-broken-windws-theory-can-be-applied-to-real-estate-regulation

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities . Vintage.

Johnson, C. Y. (2009). Breakthrough on “broken windows.” Boston Globe.

Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2008). The spreading of disorder. Science, 322 (5908), 1681-1685.

Kelling, G. L., & Sousa, W. H. (2001). Do police matter?: An analysis of the impact of new york city’s police reforms . CCI Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute.

Metcalf, S. (2006). Rudy Giuliani, American president? Retrieved from https://slate.com/culture/2006/05/rudy-giuliani-american-president.html

Morgan, R. E., & Kena, G. (2019). Criminal victimization, 2018. Bureau of Justice Statistics , 253043.

O”Brien, D. T., Farrell, C., & Welsh, B. C. (2019). Looking through broken windows: The impact of neighborhood disorder on aggression and fear of crime is an artifact of research design. Annual Review of Criminology, 2 , 53-71.

Plank, S. B., Bradshaw, C. P., & Young, H. (2009). An application of “broken-windows” and related theories to the study of disorder, fear, and collective efficacy in schools. American Journal of Education, 115 (2), 227-247.

Roberts, D. E. (1998). Race, vagueness, and the social meaning of order-maintenance policing. J. Crim. L. & Criminology, 89 , 775.

Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1999). Systematic social observation of public spaces: A new look at disorder in urban neighborhoods. American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 603-651.

Sampson, R. J., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2004). Seeing disorder: Neighborhood stigma and the social construction of “broken windows”. Social psychology quarterly, 67 (4), 319-342.

Sridhar, C. R. (2006). Broken windows and zero tolerance: Policing urban crimes. Economic and Political Weekly , 1841-1843.

Stuster, J. (2001). Albuquerque police department’s Safe Streets program (No. DOT-HS-809-278). Anacapa Sciences, inc.

Thacher, D. (2003). Order maintenance reconsidered: Moving beyond strong causal reasoning. J. Crim. L. & Criminology, 94 , 381.

Vedantam, S., Benderev, C., Boyle, T., Klahr, R., Penman, M., & Schmidt, J. (2016). How a theory of crime and policing was born, and went terribly wrong . Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2016/11/01/500104506/broken-windows-policing-and-the-origins-of-stop-and-frisk-and-how-it-went-wrong

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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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.

Further Reading

Brisman, A., Carrabine, E., & South, N. (2017). The Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts . Routledge.

Carrabine, E., Cox, P., Fussey, P., Hobbs, D., South, N., Thiel, D., & Turton, J. (2020). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction . Routledge.

Clinard, M.B. and Meier, R.F. (2015). Sociology of deviant behavior . Boston, Ma, Usa: Cengage Learning.

Downes, D. M., Mclaughlin, E., & Rock, P. E. (2016). Understanding deviance : a guide to the sociology of crime and rule-breaking (7th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gau, J. M., & Pratt, T. C. (2010). Revisiting broken windows theory: Examining the sources of the discriminant validity of perceived disorder and crime. Journal of criminal justice , 38 (4), 758-766.

Harcourt, B. E. (1998). Reflecting on the subject: A critique of the social influence conception of deterrence, the broken windows theory, and order-maintenance policing New York style. Mich. L. Rev. , 97 , 291.

Harcourt, B. E. (2005). Illusion of order: The false promise of broken windows policing . Harvard University Press.

Harcourt, B. E., & Ludwig, J. (2006). Broken windows: New evidence from New York City and a five-city social experiment. U. Chi. L. Rev. , 73 , 271.

Konkel, R. H., Ratkowski, D., & Tapp, S. N. (2019). The effects of physical, social, and housing disorder on neighborhood crime: A contemporary test of broken windows theory. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information , 8 (12), 583.

‌Newburn, T. (2017). Criminology (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

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What Is the Broken Windows Theory?

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The broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime in urban areas lead to further crime. The theory is often associated with the 2000 case of Illinois v. Wardlow , in which the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the police, based on the legal doctrine of probable cause , have the authority to detain and physically search, or “stop-and-frisk,” people in crime-prone neighborhoods who appear to be behaving suspiciously.

Key Takeaways: Broken Windows Theory

• The broken windows theory of criminology holds that visible signs of crime in densely-populated, lower-income urban areas will encourage additional criminal activity.
• Broken windows neighborhood policing tactics employ heightened enforcement of relatively minor “quality of life” crimes like loitering, public drinking, and graffiti.
• The theory has been criticized for encouraging discriminatory police practices, such as unequal enforcement based on racial profiling.

Broken Windows Theory Definition

In the field of criminology, the broken windows theory holds that lingering visible evidence of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil unrest in densely populated urban areas suggests a lack of active local law enforcement and encourages people to commit further, even more serious crimes.

The theory was first suggested in 1982 by social scientist, George L. Kelling in his article, “Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety” published in The Atlantic. Kelling explained the theory as follows:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

“Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.”

Kelling based his theory on the results of an experiment conducted by Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1969. In his experiment, Zimbardo parked an apparently disabled and abandoned car in a low-income area of the Bronx, New York City, and a similar car in an affluent Palo Alto, California neighborhood. Within 24 hours, everything of value had been stolen from the car in the Bronx. Within a few days, vandals had smashed the car’s windows and ripped out the upholstery. At the same time, the car abandoned in Palo Alto remained untouched for over a week, until Zimbardo himself smashed it with a sledgehammer. Soon, other people Zimbardo described as mostly well dressed, “clean-cut” Caucasians joined in the vandalism. Zimbardo concluded that in high-crime areas like the Bronx, where such abandoned property is commonplace, vandalism and theft occur far faster as the community takes such acts for granted. However, similar crimes can occur in any community when the people’s mutual regard for proper civil behavior is lowered by actions that suggest a general lack of concern.

Kelling concluded that by selectively targeting minor crimes like vandalism, public intoxication, and loitering, police can establish an atmosphere of civil order and lawfulness, thus helping to prevent more serious crimes.

Broken Windows Policing

In1993, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton cited Kelling and his broken windows theory as a basis for implementing a new “tough-stance” policy aggressively addressing relatively minor crimes seen as negatively affecting the quality of life in the inner-city.

Bratton directed NYPD to step up enforcement of laws against crimes like public drinking, public urination, and graffiti. He also cracked down on so-called “squeegee men,” vagrants who aggressively demand payment at traffic stops for unsolicited car window washings. Reviving a Prohibition-era city ban on dancing in unlicensed establishments, police controversially shuttered many of the city’s night clubs with records of public disturbances.

While studies of New York’s crime statistics conducted between 2001 and 2017 suggested that enforcement policies based on the broken windows theory were effective in reducing rates of both minor and serious crimes, other factors may have also contributed to the result. For example, New York’s crime decrease may have simply been part of a nationwide trend that saw other major cities with different policing practices experience similar decreases over the period. In addition, New York City’s 39% drop in the unemployment rate could have contributed to the reduction in crime.

In 2005, police in the Boston suburb of Lowell, Massachusetts, identified 34 “crime hot spots” fitting the broken windows theory profile. In 17 of the spots, police made more misdemeanor arrests, while other city authorities cleared trash, fixed streetlights, and enforced building codes. In the other 17 spots, no changes in routine procedures were made. While the areas given special attention saw a 20% reduction in police calls, a study of the experiment concluded that simply cleaning up the physical environment had been more effective than an increase in misdemeanor arrests.

Today, however, five major U.S. cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Denver—all acknowledge employing at least some neighborhood policing tactics based on Kelling’s broken windows theory. In all of these cities, police stress aggressive enforcement of minor misdemeanor laws.

Despite its popularity in major cities, police policy based on the broken windows theory is not without its critics, who question both its effectiveness and fairness of application.

In 2005, University of Chicago Law School professor Bernard Harcourt published a study finding no evidence that broken windows policing actually reduces crime. “We don’t deny that the ‘broken windows’ idea seems compelling,” wrote Harcourt. “The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work as claimed in practice.”

Specifically, Harcourt contended that crime data from New York City’s 1990s application of broken windows policing had been misinterpreted. Though the NYPD had realized greatly reduced crime rates in the broken windows enforcement areas, the same areas had also been the areas worst affected by the crack-cocaine epidemic that caused citywide homicide rates to soar. “Everywhere crime skyrocketed as a result of crack, there were eventual declines once the crack epidemic ebbed,” Harcourt note. “This is true for police precincts in New York and for cities across the country.” In short, Harcourt contended that New York’s declines in crime during the 1990s were both predictable and would have happened with or without broken windows policing.

Harcourt concluded that for most cities, the costs of broken windows policing outweigh the benefits. “In our opinion, focusing on minor misdemeanors is a diversion of valuable police funding and time from what really seems to help—targeted police patrols against violence, gang activity and gun crimes in the highest-crime ‘hot spots.’”

Broken windows policing has also been criticized for its potential to encourage unequal, potentially discriminatory enforcement practices such as racial profiling , too often with disastrous results.

Arising from objections to practices like “Stop-and-Frisk,” critics point to the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man killed by a New York City police officer in 2014. After observing Garner standing on a street corner in a high-crime area of Staten Island, police suspected him of selling “loosies,” untaxed cigarettes. When, according to the police report, Garner resisted arrest, an officer took him to the ground in a chock hold. An hour later, Garner died in the hospital of what the coroner determined to be homicide resulting from, “Compression of neck, compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” After a grand jury failed to indict the officer involved, anti-police protests broke out in several cities.

Since then, and due to the deaths of other unarmed Black men accused of minor crimes predominantly by white police officers, more sociologists and criminologists have questioned the effects of broken windows theory policing. Critics argue that it is racially discriminatory, as police statistically tend to view, and thus, target, non-whites as suspects in low-income, high-crime areas.

According to Paul Larkin, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, established historic evidence shows that persons of color are more likely than whites to be detained, questioned, searched, and arrested by police. Larkin suggests that this happens more often in areas chosen for broken windows-based policing due to a combination of: the individual’s race, police officers being tempted to stop minority suspects because they statistically appear to commit more crimes, and the tacit approval of those practices by police officials.

Sources and Further Reference

• Wilson, James Q; Kelling, George L (Mar 1982), “ Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety .” The Atlantic.
• Harcourt, Bernard E. “ Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City & a Five-City Social Experiment .” University of Chicago Law Review (June 2005).
• Fagan, Jeffrey and Davies, Garth. “ Street Stops and Broken Windows .” Fordham Urban Law Journal (2000).
• Taibbi, Matt. “ The Lessons of the Eric Garner Case .” Rolling Stone (November 2018).
• Herbert, Steve; Brown, Elizabeth (September 2006). “ Conceptions of Space and Crime in the Punitive Neoliberal City .” Antipode.
• Larkin, Paul. “ Flight, Race, and Terry Stops: Commonwealth v.Warren .” The Heritage Foundation.
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Broken Windows, Informal Social Control, and Crime: Assessing Causality in Empirical Studies

An important criminological controversy concerns the proper causal relationships between disorder, informal social control, and crime. The broken windows thesis posits that neighborhood disorder increases crime directly and indirectly by undermining neighborhood informal social control. Theories of collective efficacy argue that the association between neighborhood disorder and crime is spurious because of the confounding variable informal social control. We review the recent empirical research on this question, which uses disparate methods, including field experiments and different models for observational data. To evaluate the causal claims made in these studies, we use a potential outcomes framework of causality. We conclude that, although there is some evidence for both broken windows and informal control theories, there is little consensus in the present research literature. Furthermore, at present, most studies do not establish causality in a strong way.

INTRODUCTION

A contemporary criminological controversy concerns the interrelationships among neighborhood disorder, informal social control, and crime. This controversy derives from a rich set of theoretical ideas explaining these relationships. According to Wilson & Kelling’s (1982) broken windows thesis, physical and social disorders exert a causal effect on criminal behavior. Disorder does so directly, as it signals to criminals community indifference to crime, and indirectly, as disorder undermines informal social control. By contrast, theories of informal social control argue that the association between disorder and crime is not causal but is instead spurious because of the confounding variable neighborhood informal control ( Sampson & Raudenbush 1999 ). This theoretical divergence has important implications for criminological theory and public policy. Therefore, the conclusions of empirical research on this controversy are of paramount importance. This review discusses the controversy between broken windows and informal social control by reviewing the current state of empirical research. Perhaps the most important question in evaluating the empirical literature is the degree to which studies approximate causal relations. We use a potential outcomes or counterfactual definition of causality, which has gained prominence in statistics and social science ( Morgan & Winship 2015 , Rubin 2006 ), to assess recent research. We try, whenever possible, to give our own assessments of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the studies—our evaluation of the plausibility of the assumptions made in different research designs. This assessment is open to debate and criticism, but we feel that stating our opinion provides a point of departure for subsequent debate. We conclude our discussion with what we think are important avenues for future research.

Rather than exhaustively covering all studies, we focus on those that are well executed both theoretically and methodologically. Because we are principally concerned with how well studies approximate causality, we organize our discussion by methodological design. We acknowledge that causality is not the only important issue for evaluating empirical studies. Extensive literature exists on the important issues of proper measurement of disorder and informal control ( Hipp 2007 , 2010 , 2016 ; Kubrin 2008 ; Sampson & Raudenbush 2004 ; Skogan 2015 ; Taylor 2001 , 2015 ), implications for public policy—particularly order maintenance policing ( Braga et al. 2015 , Fagan & Davies 2000 , Harcourt 1998 , Kelling & Coles 1997 , Weisburd et al. 2015 )—and micro–macro relationships ( Matsueda 2013 , 2017 ; Taylor 2015 ). We set these aside, referring the reader to the extant literature. We also set aside detailed examination of observational studies of individual-level mechanisms of broken windows evaluated recently by O’Brien et al. (2019) , including fear of crime ( Hinkle 2015 ).

THEORIES OF DISORDER, INFORMAL CONTROL, AND CRIME

Social disorganization theory.

From their exhaustive mapping of delinquency across Chicago neighborhoods, Shaw & McKay (1931 , 1969 ) identified a strong statistical association between disorder and delinquency in which delinquency clustered in zones of transition, characterized by rapid population turnover, impoverished immigrant groups, and few homeowners. Also present were signs of physical and social disorder: dilapidated buildings, vacant lots, homeless and unsupervised youth, panhandling, and other incivilities. Delinquency rates followed a gradient—highest in the central city and progressively lower in the periphery—and remained that way over decades despite drastic changes in neighborhood ethnic composition. To explain these patterns, Shaw & McKay (1969) developed their theory of social disorganization and cultural transmission, in which rapid in- and out-migration and lack of homeownership, as well as high rates of poverty, ethnic diversity, and immigrants, undermined local social organization. Social disorganization—weak and unlinked local institutions—led to unsupervised street youth, who forged a delinquent tradition transmitted from older gangs to unsupervised youth. Shaw & McKay treated physical and social disorder as a manifestation—and, consequently, an indicator—of social disorganization. Disorder does not cause crime but instead indexes disorganization, which causes crime via weak informal control, the prevalence of unsupervised youth, and the creation and transmission of a delinquent tradition across age-graded youth groups.

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 indirectly. Directly, disorder signals to potential criminals that residents are indifferent to crime, emboldening criminals to commit crimes with impunity. This individual-level causal mechanism implies a rational actor: Motivated offenders perceive disorder to mean the absence of capable guardians ( Cohen & Felson 1979 ). Indirectly, disorder induces residents to fear crime, which causes them to avoid unfamiliar people, restrict travel to safe spaces, and withdraw from public life. Disengaged from the neighborhood, fearful residents increasingly feel that combatting disorder and crime is the duty of others. Ironically, signs of local disorder create fear of crime in residents because they assume a causal effect of disorder on crime. Eventually, as disorder and crime increase, residents with sufficient resources begin to leave the neighborhood, taking their capital with them, which undermines both community resources and the capacity for informal social control ( Wilson & Kelling 1982 ). This indirect effect is a neighborhood-level causal mechanism: Rampant disorder causes residents to withdraw, eroding neighborhood control, which fosters crime.

These two pathways form feedback loops, creating a cascading effect of crime and disorder spreading across physical spaces. As Wilson & Kelling (1982) note, one broken window (signaling indifference) is often followed by another and so on, until all windows are broken. This is an informational cascade, as the observation of disorder and crime provides information signaling the absence of social control. Disorder causes residents to withdraw from the community, weakening objective informal social control, and fostering additional crime, disorder, and incivilities, which, in turn, further undermine informal control, leading to more crime. This is a social interactional cascade in which the key causal mechanism is local residents disengaging from community attempts to control disorder and crime. Left unabated, these feedback loops can produce a crime epidemic spreading across time and space.

Figure 1 diagrams the causal relationships among disorder, informal social control, and crime specified by broken windows. Due to reciprocal pathways, this is a nonrecursive model that is underidentified for cross-sectional data without additional information such as instrumental variables (IVs) or a panel design with repeated observations.

Conceptual model of broken windows theory: disorder, social control, and crime. Two paths link disorder to crime: a direct path, in which ( a ) disorder signals community indifference, which increases crime; and an indirect path, in which ( b ) disorder elicits actual community indifference, which weakens social control, which in turn ( c ) increases crime. These effects are reinforced as ( d ) weakened social control stimulates more disorder and ( e ) crime weakens social control. Two feedback pathways ( d and e ) mean this is a nonrecursive model.

Collective Efficacy Theory of Informal Social Control

Sampson (2012) and others (e.g., Morenoff et al. 2001 , Sampson et al. 1997 ) extend Shaw & McKay’s theory of social disorganization by refining the causal mechanism of informal control, which translates neighborhood social organization into safe neighborhoods. They argued that social cohesion, including social capital, is a crucial resource for neighborhoods to solve problems collectively. Drawing from Coleman (1990) , they asserted that neighborhoods rich in social capital—intergenerational closure (parents know the parents of their children’s friends), reciprocated exchange (neighbors exchange favors and obligations), and generalized trust—have greater resources to prevent neighborhood disorder, incivilities, and crime. Such resources are translated into action via child-centered control. Borrowing from Bandura (1986) , they called this entire causal sequence collective efficacy ( Sampson et al. 1997 ). Sampson et al. (1999) specified potential spillover effects for collective efficacy, in which collective efficacy in one neighborhood affects contiguous neighborhoods, producing a social interactional cascade.

Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) used collective efficacy theory to specify causal relationships among disorder, informal control, and crime and in the process offered a critique of broken windows theory. They maintained that collective efficacy not only keeps neighborhoods safe but also keeps them clean. Because social disorder, physical disorder, and crime pose similar problems, neighborhoods high in collective efficacy are able to combat all three problems. Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) argue that, in contrast to broken windows, the correlation between disorder and crime is spurious due to the confounding variable, collective efficacy. Figure 2 depicts the collective efficacy model of disorder, informal control, and crime. This model is a restrictive recursive model nested within the broken windows model. If these restrictions are valid—crime and disorder are related solely because of confounding by exogenous collective efficacy—this model is fully recursive and identified.

Conceptual model of collective efficacy theory: disorder, social control, and crime. The direct path between disorder and crime is spurious (A = 0), and collective efficacy is an exogenous cause of both crime and disorder (B,E = 0). This is a recursive model.

POTENTIAL OUTCOMES (COUNTERFACTUAL) APPROACH TO CAUSALITY

Broken windows and collective efficacy specify competing causal relationships among disorder, informal control, and crime. To adjudicate empirically between the two requires research methods that closely approximate causal relations. To evaluate the disparate research designs used in the empirical literature, we need a framework for establishing causality. The potential outcomes framework, or Rubin causal model, is an approach to causal inference based on counterfactual reasoning using the ideal of a controlled experiment. Rather than considering only the factual statement “a given treatment happened and we observed a particular outcome,” one also considers the counterfactual statement “if a given treatment had not happened, we would have observed a particular (potential) outcome.” These two statements correspond to treatment and control groups in an ideal controlled experiment. Treatment here refers to a variable of primary interest believed to have a causal effect on the outcome under examination. In the classic experimental design, values of the treatment are assigned (manipulated) by the investigator (e.g., in randomized controlled trials, treatments are randomly assigned to subjects). For a variable to be a cause, it must have been manipulated—or, short of that, at least be manipulable in principle ( Holland 1986 ). Thus, this framework is sometimes termed an interventionist definition of causality ( Woodward 2003 ). Although potential outcome(s) is not the only causal framework ( Morgan & Winship 2015 ), it has increasingly become the dominant approach to causality in statistics and the social sciences.

If Y i 1 is the potential outcome of individual i in the treatment state, and Y i 0 is the potential outcome of individual i in the control group, the individual treatment effect is

The fundamental problem of causal inference is that for those in the treatment group, we cannot observe their outcome in the control group; conversely, for those in the control group, we cannot observe their outcome in the treatment group ( Holland 1986 ). Therefore, we cannot compute individual causal treatment effects (Δ i ). Under additional assumptions, however, we can estimate (causal) average treatment effects (ATEs). For example, we can assume, in a randomized experiment with a treatment group and a control group, treatment assignment is ignorable:

where T = 0 , 1 denotes treatment assignment, and ⊥ denotes statistical independence. Here, the difference in the sample means for assignments T = 1 and T = 0 estimates E ( Y 0 − Y 1 ), the ATE of T on Y .

In an observational study, Equation 2 is unlikely to hold due to selectivity or confounding, but treatment assignment may be ignorable after conditioning on covariates Z :

Equation 3 includes the additional identification condition that at each level of the covariates, there is a positive probability of receiving either treatment. The set of conditions described in Equation 3 is known as strong ignorability given covariates ( Rosenbaum & Rubin 1983 ). Here, the conditional ATE (CATE) E ( Y 1 − Y 0 | Z = z ) can be used to estimate ATEs using a properly specified regression or propensity score match that includes all relevant covariates Z . The major difficulty of establishing causality in observational (nonexperimental) studies is the problem of controlling for all relevant Z to achieve conditional ignorability.

Observational studies of disorder, informal control, and crime have used different methods to approximate CATEs. Cross-sectional studies of neighborhoods use observed covariates to control for confounding, under the assumption of no reciprocal causation. Cross-lagged panel models relax this assumption and examine lagged endogenous predictors over time, under the assumptions that there is sufficient temporal variation to obtain stable estimates and that observed covariates achieve conditional ignorability. Fixed-effects panel models relax the assumption that all relevant time-stable confounders are included in the model. By estimating within-individual (neighborhood) variation over time, fixed-effects models control for both observed and unobserved time-stable covariates. Fixed-effects models, however, still require that all relevant time-varying confounders are included. In reviewing the empirical literature on disorder and informal control, we will assess the degree to which studies achieve conditional ignorability.

The definition of unit causal effects makes the stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA), a term coined by Rubin (1986 , p. 961): “the value of Y for unit u when exposed to treatment t will be the same no matter what mechanism is used to assign treatment t to unit u and no matter what treatments the other units receive.” SUTVA implies two distinct assumptions: consistency and absence of interference. Consistency means that the mechanism used to assign treatment can be ignored because the outcomes of the treated observations will be invariant to different assignment mechanisms. Thus, an individual assigned a treatment in an experimental setting exhibits the same outcome as if they naturally received the treatment in the real world. Consistency is less likely in experimental settings because the treatment assignments are carried out by the researcher instead of assigned through natural processes in the real world. Results of the experiment may not generalize to real-world settings because of differences in the treatment-assignment process. By contrast, consistency is more likely to hold for observational data given that treatments are assigned naturally in the real world and not through an artificial assignment process.

No interference means that the treatment assignment of one subject does not affect the outcomes of other subjects. This form of contamination can bias treatment estimates in both experimental and nonexperimental designs. Interference often arises via social processes such as spillover effects, displacement, and cascades ( Matsueda 2017 , Nagin & Sampson 2019 ). Interference violates the assumption typically made in observational studies of identically and independently distributed observations (conditional on covariates). When the form of dependence is known, it can be addressed by specific models, such as autoregressive spatial models for spillover effects between contiguous observations or social network models of contagion across individuals.

Beginning with experimental studies, we review the quantitative empirical research on disorder, informal control, and crime, with an eye toward adjudicating between competing theories of broken windows and collective efficacy and evaluating causal claims.

REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

Controlled experiments begin with treatment and control groups and manipulate the treatment by intervening in the experimental group. The key to achieving ignorability is ensuring that treatment and control groups are equivalent before the intervention. Randomized experiments ensure groups are probabilistically equivalent by randomly assigning subjects to groups. Because the treatment is manipulated by the researcher, it is strongly exogenous to the outcome, ruling out reciprocal causation. Thus, a well-executed randomized experiment can achieve ignorability and, therefore, strong internal validity. The external validity of experiments is often compromised in three ways. First, observations are rarely obtained through representative sampling, limiting inferences to larger populations of interest. Second, treatment assignments of experiments often differ from the natural way that treatments are assigned in the real world, compromising consistency, and therefore causality, and again limiting generalizability to relevant populations. Third, interference can occur. In individual-level studies, subjects may influence each other on the basis of treatment assignment; in aggregate spatial studies, treatment effects may spill over and affect contiguous aggregate units.

Although a number of studies have attempted to test aspects of broken windows and informal social control using laboratory experiments (e.g., Diekmann et al. 2015 , Engel et al. 2014 ), it is our opinion that no studies we found exhibited sufficient external validity to provide evidence for or against the causal pathways in Figure 1 . Consequently, we examine only field experiments. Compared with laboratory experiments, field experiments trade off some internal validity for gains in external validity. They are conducted in the natural social contexts in which disorder, informal control, and crime are likely to occur and use local subjects who are the typical actors involved. Field experiments use interventions that closely approximate the real-world treatment of interest. This increase in external validity comes at a cost. Because they are conducted in natural settings, field experiments are unable to control the environment of the experiment and, thus, less able to rule out potential confounding factors. Interference, in which subjects of a treatment group affect the outcomes of others, is more likely to occur. Field experiments are typically conducted in a single or small number of geographical locations and rarely use representative sampling of locations or subjects.

A number of field experiments examine the individual-level hypothesis, derived from broken windows, that disorder exerts a direct causal effect on crime (norm violation). The most significant and highly cited broken windows field experiment, Keizer et al.’s (2008) study published in Science , has led to a resurgence of interest in the use of field experiments to study broken windows. Therefore, we discuss this study in some detail. Following Cialdini (2003) , Keizer et al. (2008) conceptualize broken windows as a cross-norm inhibition effect. Descriptive norms reflect common behaviors in a setting, while injunctive norms reflect what is commonly held to be proper in society. Observing a descriptive norm (e.g., seeing litter on the ground) that conflicts with an injunctive norm (e.g., it is wrong to litter) inhibits other injunctive norms as well (e.g., it is wrong to steal). Disorder thus causes crime by reducing inhibitions against criminal behavior. Keizer et al. (2008) conducted six related field experiments in which they manipulated a signal that a contextual norm had been violated (treatment) and then observed whether a target (injunctive) norm was more likely to be violated (outcome).

In the first experiment, the contextual norm was antigraffiti and the target norm was antilittering. Flyers were placed on the handlebars of bicycles parked in an alley of a shopping district. On the wall was a “no graffiti” sign. For the treatment condition, the wall was covered with graffiti; for the control condition, no graffiti was visible. The dependent variable was whether the owner of the bicycle littered the flyer upon returning. Of 77 subjects in each condition, 33% littered in the control condition compared with 69% in the treatment condition, a significant difference. Another experiment placed flyers on bicycles parked in a bicycle shed near a train station, with a treatment condition of the sound of fireworks set off illegally. Again, differences in the incidence of littering the flyers were significant: 26 (52%) littered in the control condition compared to 37 (80%) in the fireworks condition.

A third experiment used a private setting of a supermarket parking garage. The contextual norm was indicated by a “please return your shopping carts” sign and the outcome was littering flyers attached to the windshields of parked cars. In the treatment condition, with unreturned shopping carts strewn about, 35 of 60 (58%) shoppers littered the flyer compared with 13 of 60 (30%) shoppers in the control condition. The fourth experiment used a public setting of a car parking lot, in which the contextual norm was designated by a police ordinance “locking bicycles to the fence is prohibited” sign on a fence outside the lot. The target norm was indicated by a second police ordinance “do not enter” sign at an opening of the fence. In the treatment condition in which four bicycles were locked to the fence, 40 of 49 (82%) subjects violated the “do not enter” sign, whereas only 12 of 44 (27%) violated the norm in the control condition.

The experiment most relevant to broken windows examined theft. Keizer et al. (2008) left a mailing envelope—which was addressed and stamped and had a 5-euro note visible in the envelope’s window—hanging out of a mailbox’s mailing slot. The dependent variable was whether passersby stole the envelope. Two treatment conditions consisted of litter on the ground near the mailbox ( N = 72) and graffiti spray-painted on the mailbox ( N = 60). In the control condition of no graffiti and litter ( N = 71), nine passersby (13%) stole the envelope, compared to 18 (25%) in the litter condition and 16 (27%) in the graffiti condition.

Keizer et al.’s (2008) article is a citation classic, having received nearly 1,000 Google Scholar citations in approximately ten years. It has also spawned a number of studies of broken windows using similar research designs. Nevertheless, the paper has been subject to sharp criticism. Wicherts & Bakker (2014) , in particular, argue that the study is fraught with methodological weaknesses, such as failing to address potential confounding, observer bias, and measurement error; using inflated Type I error rates due to dependencies among subjects; using sequential testing; and failing to control for multiple testing. A major limitation of the study is that each experiment was carried out in a single geographic neighborhood in Groningen, Netherlands, compromising external validity. This criticism has been partially addressed by attempts to replicate Keizer et al.’s (2008) results in different settings. Volker (2017) attempted to replicate Keizer et al.’s (2008) mailbox letter theft experiment in the identical neighborhood as the original study and failed to find significant effects. In their follow-up, Keizer et al. (2011) found the effect of disorder on norm violation stronger in the presence of a sign prohibiting the form of disorder present; however, Wicherts & Bakker (2014) offered similar criticisms to those leveled at the first study. A third study found negative effects of norm violation on prosocial behavior ( Keizer et al. 2013 ).

Keuschnigg & Wolbring (2015) replicated Keizer et al.’s (2008) experiments in two German neighborhoods differing in social capital measured with administrative data. With abandoned and damaged bicycles as a disorder manipulation, they dropped envelopes with five-, ten-, or one-hundred-euro notes and used theft of the envelopes as the outcome. They found treatment heterogeneity: The probability of envelope theft was higher in the disorder condition but only in the low-social-capital neighborhood and for smaller monetary values. This study is significant because it attempts to address the role of informal social control in the disorder–crime relationship. A drawback is that using only two neighborhoods to control for social capital ignores myriad other differences between neighborhoods that may affect theft.

Berger & Hevenstone (2016) conducted field experiments testing the relationship between litter and sanctioning of litterers in Bern and Zurich, Switzerland, and New York. A confederate dropped a bottle near a trash receptacle in view of pedestrians while another recorded whether participants verbally sanctioned the confederate, subtly sanctioned (e.g., an angry glance) the confederate, or picked up the dropped bottle. The researchers manipulated the treatment conditions by introducing bags of garbage and stray litter or conducting the drop farther from the trash can. The manipulation moderately reduced both forms of sanctioning and strongly reduced picking up the bottle. In contrast, dropping the bottle farther from the trash receptacle reduced picking up the bottle but had no effect on sanctioning. Berger & Hevenstone (2016) interpreted their findings as a local effect of litter on both informal social control and cleanup of additional litter, which could produce a cascade effect of littering. They note the presence of interference: In 6.4% of trials, after a participant reacted to the littering, a second individual subsequently joined in sanctioning the confederate. Thus, sanctioning may be a contagious behavior.

These individual-level experiments approximate ignorability by manipulating treatments of graffiti and litter and using naturally occurring passersby, making treatment and control subjects different by the timing of their appearance. Thus, unless treatment and control conditions differ by some confounding event occurring for one but not the other, equivalence seems assured. Furthermore, because the treatment conditions are one-shot transitory events, subjects are unlikely to interfere with each other. The transitory nature of treatment, however, means that these experiments cannot test the hypothesis that repeated exposure to disorder is necessary for norm violations.

A second set of field experiments intervene at the neighborhood level and examine aggregate neighborhood outcomes (see Kondo et al.’s 2018 review). Branas et al. (2018) conducted a randomized experiment of neighborhood disorder in which the main intervention cleaned up physical disorder in vacant lots, created a park-like atmosphere, and maintained the lots on a regular schedule. A second intervention only cleaned up physical disorder. They found that the main intervention, but not cleanup alone, was significantly negatively associated with survey-recorded perceived crime, vandalism, and staying inside due to safety concerns, and positively associated with socializing outside. The main intervention was also positively associated with people watching out for each other but only in neighborhoods below the poverty line. By contrast, both the main intervention and cleanup alone were negatively associated with an index of crimes.

Branas et al. (2018) estimated intent-to-treat models, which estimate treatment effects regardless of whether experimental subjects complied with treatment. If a policy implementing the treatment would result in similar noncompliance, intent-to-treat estimates will give the policy effect expected in the real world. By contrast, if interest is in the effect of actual neighborhood disorder, noncompliance is a problem, and intent-to-treat estimates may be biased. To overcome this, a model controlling for noncompliance uses the randomized intent-to-treat variable as an IV for compliance, yielding an unbiased estimate of the complier average causal effects (CACE) (see Imbens & Rubin 2015 ). Branas et al. (2018) found that CACE and intent-to-treat estimates were similar, suggesting that noncompliance was not a major problem.

This study suggests that neighborhood disorder may undermine social cohesion as well as increase neighborhood crime. The use of randomization ensures ignorability. The manipulated treatment—cleaning up vacant lots—suggests a treatment amenable to public policy intervention, where noncompliance is likely to occur. Nevertheless, we cannot rule out the ecological fallacy because we cannot know for certain if the individuals perceiving high disorder are the same ones withdrawing from the community or committing more crimes. In a related study, Branas et al. (2016) found a stronger reduction in firearm violence near vacant buildings that were boarded up and had their exteriors cleaned. The relevance of these studies to broken windows hinges on an untested assumption of symmetric causality ( Lieberson 1985 ): Removing disorder reduces crime; therefore, introducing disorder increases crime. Researchers clearly cannot introduce disorder at the neighborhood level due to the potential for harm but it is conceivable that natural experiments—sudden exogenous increases in disorder—could be exploited to confirm this symmetry.

A third set of experiments come from the moving to opportunity (MTO) studies, which used a randomized quasi-experimental design ( Harcourt & Ludwig 2006 ). Beginning in 1994 in five major cities, MTO randomly assigned 4,600 low-income families—who were living in public housing or Section 8 project-based housing in high-poverty neighborhoods—to one of three groups. A treatment group was offered housing vouchers for moving to neighborhoods having poverty rates of ten percent or less. A Section 8 group was offered housing vouchers to move to any neighborhood. A control group was not offered housing vouchers. Random assignment rules out the potential biasing effects of self-selection into neighborhoods. Approximately half of the families complied with the treatment by relocating through MTO; therefore, intent-to-treat (ITT) models of the opportunity to move were augmented with ATEs on the treated (ATT) using treatment assignment as an IV. Compared with controls, members of the treatment and Section 8 groups moved to neighborhoods lower in poverty and higher in reported informal social control. Nevertheless, in neither ITT nor ATT models did the treatment groups show lower arrest rates, delinquency, or behavior problems by 2001 ( Kling et al. 2005 ). Harcourt & Ludwig (2006) conclude that broken windows is unsupported: Either declines in community disorder do not reduce criminality or their effects are offset by increases in neighborhood socioeconomic status.

Although MTO studies rule out self-selection, for our purposes, they have three weaknesses. First, the treatment is a compound treatment, consisting of movement to a neighborhood with different poverty, disorder, collective efficacy, and other unmeasured characteristics. The studies cannot distinguish between causal effects of these different treatments. Second, analyses do not consider spillover effects. Sobel (2006) has argued persuasively that the no-interference assumption may have been violated. Families given vouchers may be reluctant to move unless their neighborhood friends also move and may be unable to find suitable housing in a tight housing market when many others are given vouchers. Such interference could bias estimated treatment effects. Third, Sampson (2008) suggested that studies using MTO data must be interpreted carefully: Any treatment effect also includes disruptive effects of moving; voucher users moved to destinations lower in poverty but similar on other indicators of disadvantage and embedded in larger disadvantaged areas; and the treatment resulted in only modest changes in conditions. The sample also constitutes a small, highly disadvantaged group subject to years of cumulative deprivation, limiting external validity.

Our review of field experiments of disorder, social control, and crime suggests mixed results. Keizer et al. (2008) consistently conclude that their experiments support the broken windows thesis (direct effect of disorder on norm violation), but those experiments have been criticized on methodological grounds and have failed to replicate in one instance and were replicated only in a neighborhood poor in social capital in another. Some experimental evidence finds support for the effects of disorder on crime at the neighborhood level, although the mechanism is unclear. Disorder may also impede social control behavior at the individual level.

REVIEW OF OBSERVATIONAL (NONEXPERIMENTAL) STUDIES

Observational studies typically combine survey data on individuals within neighborhoods with administrative data from police and the census. In principle, such nested data allow estimation of combined micro–macro models, but in practice, this research typically models macro relationships among variables aggregated to neighborhoods. A major advantage of observational studies of neighborhoods is they examine natural variation across a representative sample of neighborhoods, making external validity strong. Because the research environment lacks the controls of experiments, however, there are greater threats to internal validity, as ignorability is difficult to approximate. Observational designs differ in how they address the problem of ignorability. Research on disorder and control can be categorized into four nonexperimental designs and models: ( a ) recursive cross-sectional models; ( b ) nonrecursive simultaneous equation models; ( c ) fixed-effects panel models; and ( d ) cross-lagged panel models.

Cross-Sectional Recursive Models

Cross-sectional recursive models are commonly used to examine community theories of crime. The key independent variables, disorder and social control, are not manipulated by the researcher but rather are endogenous. To rule out what econometricians term endogeneity bias, these models rely on two strong assumptions. First, treatment assignment—the process by which neighborhoods attain a level of social control or disorder—is ignorable conditional on exogenous control variables. Thus, all relevant covariates are included in the model. Second, reverse causality—crime affecting either disorder or social control—is absent.

In an important cross-sectional study of neighborhood disorder and crime, Skogan (1990) pooled surveys covering 40 areas in six major US cities to examine a model of disorder and decay. Under the assumption that his path models were well specified, he found a strong effect of perceived disorder on crime, in which disorder mediated the effects of poverty, residential instability, and racial heterogeneity on crime, supporting broken windows. Disorder was measured with an index of social and physical disorder indicators that displayed convergent and discriminant validity. Skogan noted that informal social control is negatively correlated with disorder; however, he did not include it in his structural models. Harcourt (1998) reanalyzed Skogan’s data, excluded a small number of neighborhoods with unusually high disorder and crime, and found results were not robust, although, as Xu et al. (2005) pointed out, Harcourt’s reanalysis lacks statistical power.

Cross-sectional studies have also supported theories of informal control (e.g., Sampson & Groves 1989 ). Using police data, census data, and survey data on 8,782 residents from 343 Chicago neighborhoods from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), Sampson et al. (1997) examined collective efficacy, sociodemographic structure, and crime. Collective efficacy was measured by residents’ reports of informal control (e.g., would neighbors intervene if children were committing deviance?) and social cohesion (e.g., neighbors help each other) adjusted for differential composition of informants across neighborhoods. Using three-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) models, they found that collective efficacy was strongly negatively related to survey-measured victimization and perceived crime as well as police-reported homicides. Collective efficacy also mediated much of the effects of neighborhood disadvantage, residential instability, and immigration. Although this study was carefully conducted—particularly in addressing measurement issues—the cross-sectional design could not rule out reciprocal effects.

Subsequent cross-sectional studies replicated Sampson et al.’s (1997) results in other settings or under varying specifications (e.g., Mazerolle et al. 2010 , Sampson & Wikström 2008 , but not Bruinsma et al. 2013 ). Matsueda & Drakulich (2016) augmented Sampson et al.’s (1997) models to adjust individual perceptions of collective efficacy for perceived deviance. Using the Seattle Neighborhoods and Crime Survey, they found that respondents who observe deviance in their neighborhood report a lower likelihood of neighbors intervening. Nevertheless, controlling for observed deviance resulted in a stronger association between collective efficacy and crime.

Neighborhoods in closer proximity tend to be more similar than those far apart, resulting in spatial autocorrelated data. This can be due to substantive processes, such as spillover or cascade effects, or methodological artifacts, such as spatial mismatch in which the true unit of analysis in causal processes differs from the unit used in the study (see Sampson et al. 1999 , Taylor 2015 ). In either case, the result can be interference as, for example, social capital in one neighborhood (treatment) spills over into a low-social-capital neighborhood (control), lowering its crime rate. Sampson et al. (1999) reanalyzed PHDCN data using first-order spatial autoregressive lag models and found evidence of spillover in neighborhood collective efficacy.

Morenoff et al. (2001) reanalyzed PHDCN data to explore spillover effects in models of social ties, collective efficacy, and future homicide rates. By controlling for homicide rates for three years preceding the survey, they partially address ignorability as prior homicide partly absorbs unobserved (omitted) stable covariates. They find organizations and social ties important for predicting collective efficacy (but not crime). They also find that collective efficacy predicts lower homicide rates but does not mediate socioeconomic disadvantage as strongly as found in Sampson et al. (1997) . Building on this model, Browning et al. (2004) found that collective efficacy predicts lower homicide rates, but the effect is attenuated in the presence of dense social ties (see also Bellair & Browning 2010 ). This suggests that measures of network density moderate collective efficacy and cannot serve as a proxy for informal control (e.g., Markowitz et al. 2001 ).

In sum, cross-sectional studies find effects of neighborhood disorder on crime and effects of informal control on crime that persist in the face of spatial autoregression. These studies do not manipulate disorder or informal control and thus make strong assumptions about causal order (no reciprocal causation) and ignorability (controls for social disorganization achieve conditional ignorability).

Nonrecursive (Simultaneous Equation) Models

In principle, simultaneous equation models with IVs resolve the problem of reverse causality for nonexperimental studies in which treatments are not manipulated but rather are assigned through an endogenous process (e.g., Greene 2003 ). Figure 3 depicts a nonrecursive model in which social control and crime are simultaneously determined. The problem here is that, in the crime (social control) equation, the endogenous predictor, social control (crime), is correlated with the disturbance ε 1 ( ε 2 ), which violates a key assumption of the general linear model, causing estimates to be biased. To resolve this, at least one IV that strongly predicts social control but has no direct effect on crime—holding social control constant—is needed to identify the effect of social control on crime. Similarly, at least one IV that strongly predicts crime but not social control—holding crime constant—is needed to identify the effect of crime on social control. These exclusionary restrictions, in which γ 1 = γ 2 = 0, are indicated in Figure 3 .

Nonrecursive model of social control and crime with lagged instrumental variables (IVs). Social control and crime are reciprocally related ( β 1 , β 2 ) with correlated errors ( ε 1 , ε 2 ). The assumption that the IVs for social control and crime have no cross-lagged effects—signified by the restrictions γ 1 = γ 2 = 0 ( dotted lines )—permits identification.

Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) used nonrecursive models to estimate causal relationships among collective efficacy, disorder, and crime while controlling for crime’s effect on collective efficacy. They used systematic social observation (SSO), an innovative method of measuring disorder across neighborhoods: Videos of street blocks taken by SUVs driving through streets of Chicago during daylight were coded for signs of social and physical disorder. Following Sampson et al. (1997) , they measured collective efficacy using a multilevel measurement model of PHDCN data; crime is captured by police-reported homicide, robbery, and burglary. To identify the reciprocal effects between collective efficacy and crime, the authors assumed that reciprocated exchange among neighbors and attachment to neighborhood (IVs for collective efficacy) affect crime only indirectly through collective efficacy. They used geocoded victim-based homicides from death records as an IV for police-reported crimes under the assumption that resident-based homicide affects collective efficacy solely through police-reported crimes. Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) found, contrary to broken windows, no direct relationship between disorder and crime net of collective efficacy for homicide or burglary. They did, however, find support for a “feedback loop, whereby disorder entices robbery, which in turn undermines collective efficacy, leading over time to yet more robbery” ( Sampson & Raudenbush 1999 , p. 637). Researchers have critiqued Sampson & Raudenbush for assuming that crime does not feedback on disorder and disorder does not feedback on collective efficacy, and therefore, there could be an indirect pathway of disorder on crime through collective efficacy ( Gault & Silver 2008 , Xu et al. 2005 ). O’Brien & Kauffman (2013) replicated Sampson & Raudenbush’s (1999) main results using a survey of rural youth with respondent prosociality—rather than crime—as an outcome. They found rater-assessed and respondent-perceived disorder were unrelated to prosociality, but collective efficacy predicted both disorder and low adolescent prosociality. Although Sampson & Raudenbush specify collective efficacy as a composite of cohesion and expectations for social control, Taylor (1996) found disorder negatively related to social control and positively related to cohesion—effects that canceled out in reduced forms.

Sampson & Wikström (2008) used data from 3,992 individuals in 200 Stockholm neighborhoods and Chicago’s PHDCN to make a cross-national comparison of relationships among collective efficacy, perceived disorder, and crime, controlling for indicators of social disorganization. They found collective efficacy negatively associated with neighborhood crime and victimization in both cities. Sampson & Wikström (2008) found that, controlling for collective efficacy, disorder had a strong positive association with reported violent crimes in Stockholm but not in Chicago. Although these results provide evidence for cross-national consistency in collective efficacy, they also reveal the disorder–crime relationship in Stockholm survives controlling for confounding collective efficacy, a finding that supports broken windows.

Using data from the British Crime Survey, Markowitz et al. (2001) applied nonrecursive models to relationships among burglary, social cohesion, fear of crime, and perceived disorder. To identify the simultaneous parameters, they used lagged versions of endogenous variables as IVs. Thus, the exclusion restriction is no lagged effects in the presence of contemporaneous effects. The authors used survey measures of disorder (e.g., neighborhood litter, vandalism, and loitering teenagers), social cohesion (organizational participation, helping behavior, and neighborhood satisfaction), and fear of crime (fear walking after dark and worried about burglary or robbery). They summed and aggregated the indicators to create neighborhood-level indices. They controlled for disorganization (ethnic heterogeneity, family disruption, and urbanization) to achieve ignorability. In cross-sectional models, Markowitz et al. (2001) found a nonsignificant effect of disorder on burglary, holding constant cohesion and previous burglary. Both nonrecursive and cross-lagged panel models reveal cohesion and disorder are reciprocally related (each at −0.18 standardized), as are burglary and disorder. Furthermore, they found a feedback loop in which social cohesion reduced burglary and disorder, each of which increased fear of crime, which in turn, fed back to reduce social cohesion. These findings generally support broken windows.

Previous studies using nonrecursive models also found evidence that crime—particularly robbery—is associated with less informal social control. Liska & Warner (1991) modeled the reciprocal effects between crime and constrained social behavior (a combination of fear of crime, going out at night, and limiting activities because of crime). Using the US National Crime Survey, they analyzed crime victimization (robbery and a general index of felony crimes) for 26 cities. To identify their simultaneous equations, they used population density as an instrument for crime (assuming no direct effect on constrained social behavior) and media coverage of homicide for constrained social behavior (assuming no direct effect on crime). These are very strong assumptions. They find a reciprocal relationship between robbery and constrained social behavior: Constrained social behavior reduces robbery and other victimization, but robbery also increases constrained social behavior.

Using data on 100 Seattle neighborhoods, Bellair (2000) estimated nonrecursive models of informal surveillance and crime, comparing burglary with a combined measure of robbery and stranger assault. Following Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) , Bellair used reciprocated exchange among neighbors as an instrument for informal control. He used unsupervised teenage groups as an instrument for crime. Because the presence of unsupervised teens is likely to elicit more surveillance even when crime is held constant, Bellair (2000) tried other instruments for crime, including percentage of bars and clubs in the neighborhood and percentage of 16–19-year-olds in the neighborhood (note that each instrument could also affect surveillance directly). Nevertheless, Bellair found that robbery and stranger assault reduce informal surveillance by increasing perceived risk of victimization, which leads to withdrawal from public spaces. Conversely, burglaries lead to greater surveillance. Furthermore, controlling for perceived risk of attack, surveillance is negatively associated with robbery and assault, but not burglary.

In sum, nonrecursive models appear to find a reciprocal causal relationship between informal control (social cohesion) and disorder. Sampson & Raudenbush (1999) found collective efficacy reduces crime but not vice versa, and the effect of disorder on crime is largely spurious due to the confounder, collective efficacy. Other studies, however, find reciprocal effects between informal control and crime, and one finds support for the broken windows indirect pathway in which social cohesion undermines disorder, disorder fosters fear of crime, and fear of crime feeds back to reduce cohesion ( Markowitz et al. 2001 ).

In principle, simultaneous equation models allow researchers to estimate feedback effects; however, in practice, such models require researchers to make strong assumptions to identify key parameters. Consequently, recent applications of simultaneous equations have searched for naturally occurring strong instruments, such as lotteries that randomize treatments to subjects, as in the military draft (e.g., Angrist & Krueger 2001 ), or naturally occurring exogenous shocks that create strong instruments. For example, Kirk (2015) used Hurricane Katrina as an exogenous intervention that dispersed parolees geographically to estimate the effects of returning parolees to their local neighborhoods on recidivism rates. Unfortunately, such strong instruments have not been available to identify nonrecursive relationships among disorder, control, and crime, leaving results open to question.

Panel Models: Cross-Lagged Effects and Fixed Effects

Panel designs collect data on samples of observations repeatedly over short time spans. Researchers examining disorder, informal control, and crime have typically used one of two panel models. First are cross-lagged panel models, in which the interrelationships among time-varying endogenous variables are modeled as first-order lagged variables. Thus, the models estimate (residualized) change in endogenous variables. In Figure 4 , these lagged effects include stability effects (e.g., social control on itself) and cross-lagged effects (e.g., social control on crime and vice versa). Cross-lagged panel models address causality in several ways. The cross-lagged effects specify a causal order among variables consistent with their temporal order. To obtain ATEs in dynamic panel models, one assumes sequential ignorability (conditional ignorability at each time point) ( Rosenbaum & Rubin 1983 ). Sequential ignorability is addressed by including potential time-invariant confounders (exogenous controls in Figure 4 ) as well as stability effects, which help absorb unobserved heterogeneity. Thus, selection into endogenous variables is assumed to be captured by a combination of observed confounders, stabilities, and cross-lags. To obtain stable estimates, cross-lagged panel models make substantial demands of the data: Endogenous variables must have changed sufficiently to model change, and contemporaneous correlations among endogenous predictor variables must be low enough to provide sufficient statistical power, given modest samples of neighborhoods.

Cross-lagged panel model of social control and crime. T1, T2, and T3 represent time periods. Social control (crime) impacts both social control and crime in the next period. Double-headed arrows between ε indicate correlated errors.

Second are fixed-effects models. These models pool the time-series cross-sectional data, yielding NT observations, where N is the number of neighborhoods and T is the number of time periods (waves). Fixed-effects models control for unobserved heterogeneity (time-stable omitted confounders) by estimating within-neighborhood variation by, for example, including N – 1 dummy variables. Thus, fixed-effects models capitalize on panel data to attain conditional ignorability by controlling for all unobserved stable confounders (see Sobel 2012 for assumptions needed to obtain ATEs in fixed-effects models). All relevant time-varying covariates are assumed to be included in the model. Fixed-effects models can include lagged variables—including crosslags—which make greater demands of the data ( Allison et al. 2017 , Wooldridge 2010 ).

Taylor (2001) used two waves of data spaced 12 years apart in 66 tracts in Baltimore to examine the effect of disorder on crime, fear of crime, avoiding dangerous locations, and intentions to move. Disorder was measured by raters observing neighborhoods and separate respondent-perceived physical and social disorder. Taylor found that each indicator of disorder was linked to a different form of crime. This implies different types and measures of disorder may operate as different treatments and combining them into a single measure may mask their separate effects. Using multilevel models, he found both assessed and perceived disorder were associated with fear of crime at the individual level, although only perceived social disorder was associated with avoiding dangerous places and intentions to move. Taylor argued that rater assessments of disorder failed to capture social disorder most troubling to residents—because it is transient and relatively rare—which draws into question objective measures like SSO in capturing a key form of disorder. Taylor does not examine spatial or reciprocal effects.

Using administrative data and ecometric measurement models of survey responses from the Boston Neighborhood Survey, O’Brien & Sampson (2015) examined disorder and crime with two-period cross-lagged panel models. Applying exploratory factor models to police dispatch data, they obtain four measures of conflict and disorder: public social disorder (e.g., public intoxication), public violence (e.g., assault), private violence (e.g., domestic violence), and gun prevalence (e.g., shootings). Physical disorder is measured with counts of reports for private neglect (e.g., housing issues) or public denigration (e.g., detritus) (see O’Brien et al. 2015 ). All measures were aggregated to census tracts. They also included time-invariant controls: percent Hispanic, percent black, income, and baseline collective efficacy.

O’Brien & Sampson (2015) found that no form of disorder or violence was predicted by (or predictive of) public physical disorder. Public social disorder did, however, moderately predict public violence (standardized β = 0.11), although less strongly than did private conflict (0.17). Public social disorder was strongly predicted by private conflict (0.33) and public violence (0.22). This indicates a reciprocal relationship between public violence and public social disorder (but not physical disorder), which supports broken windows theory. The authors could not examine whether social disorder operated through informal social control—the indirect pathway of broken windows—because collective efficacy was measured only at the baseline. The authors also report a second feedback loop of personal conflict in which private conflicts escalate to gun violence: Private conflict predicts gun violence directly (0.19) and via public violence (0.17), which also predicts gun violence (0.20), and gun violence in turn feeds back on future private conflict (0.33). They interpret this result as supporting a social escalation model, in which private conflicts spill over into public spaces. These analyses are limited to residential neighborhoods only, which may inhibit generalizability, as crime and disorder are often concentrated in nonresidential areas ( Yang 2010 ).

Using quasi-experimental methods and panel models, Wheeler et al. (2018) examined the effect of vacant property demolitions on crime. Vacant properties are a form of disorder that may increase crime by signaling low social control (broken windows) or providing opportunities to commit crimes out of sight (situational opportunity). Increases in crime may, however, be spurious if crime and vacant lots are each the result of social disorganization. To examine this, Wheeler and colleagues capitalize on 2,000 demolitions occurring in Buffalo, New York, between 2010 and 2015 to model changes in crime at neighborhood and microplace levels. They estimate a difference-indifference model that matches demolished properties to nondemolished controls using propensity scores based on pretreatment crime and local demographic composition. Comparing crimes before and after demolition at exact addresses and varying distances, they found reductions in crime averaged 90% at demolished parcels. Significant reductions were seen out to more than 1,000 feet. To minimize interference between treatment and controls, the authors estimated a neighborhood-level spatial panel model relating counts of demolitions in census tracts to changes in crime. At the tract level, they found mixed results, as demolitions exerted no significant effects on violent crimes or total police calls, and only a significant spatial effect on nonviolent crimes. That is, demolitions in adjacent neighborhoods are associated with crime reductions, but demolitions within the neighborhood are not. Together these results suggest that removal of vacant properties may reduce crime at the microlevel but may not suppress overall crime in a neighborhood.

Using a two-period cross-lagged, spatial autoregressive model, Boggess & Maskaly (2014) examined effects of disorder on robbery, assault, and disorder in Reno, Nevada. They measured disorder using police calls about intoxication, unwanted persons, graffiti, abandoned vehicles, litter, and dumping and used police-reported robbery and assault as outcomes. They found that, controlling for neighborhood sociodemographic composition, disorder predicts robbery and assault. They also found weak spatial relationships and a modest feedback effect of crime on disorder. However, with no measures of informal control or fear of crime, they cannot rule out spuriousness, and cannot estimate indirect paths between disorder and crime. Their use of police reports for both disorder and crime may introduce a response set, as invoking police is a form of social control. Although Boggess & Maskaly did not provide interwave correlations for disorder, the magnitude of the lagged disorder coefficients (greater than 0.96), large standard errors of other predictors, and a sample of only N = 117 suggest low statistical power.

Wheeler (2017) examined the effects of 311 calls (complaints to the city for physical disorder) on crimes at microplaces (street segments and intersections) in Washington, DC. He divided 311 calls into two categories—detritus (e.g., garbage, abandoned vehicles, illegal dumping) and infrastructure (e.g., potholes, damaged sidewalks, graffiti)—and created an index of serious police-reported crime. The models were carefully done, addressing a number of threats to internal validity. To address ignorability, Wheeler used fixed-effects models to eliminate stable unobserved neighborhood effects, with neighborhoods defined as 500-m squares. To address reciprocal causation, he controlled for prior crime in models of future crime. To model cascading effects of broken windows, he used a first-order, spatial autoregressive lagged crime variable. Wheeler (2017) found that both forms of physical disorder were modestly associated with future crime: An increase of 50 disorder calls for service was significantly associated with one fewer crime. This study is limited exclusively to physical disorder, which may be less consequential for crime than social disorder ( St. Jean 2007 , Yang 2010 ). Furthermore, Wheeler acknowledges that 311 calls are likely to be correlated with informal control against crime, and therefore, disorder could be capturing effects of unobserved informal control.

Although most studies of disorder and informal control use data from the United States, a few apply panel models to other nations. Steenbeek & Hipp (2011) used ten-year panel data from 74 neighborhoods in Utrecht, Netherlands, and distinguished potential informal control (social cohesion and shared expectations for control) from behavioral informal control in cross-lagged models of disorder, social cohesion, and informal control. They did not model crime. Their cross-sectional models replicated previous findings in which social control reduces disorder. Their panel models, however, showed no effect of social control or cohesion on future disorder. By contrast, they found disorder to be negatively associated with future control potential (consistent with broken windows) and residential stability; stability, in turn, is positively associated with future disorder. Disorder is positively associated with future control behavior, which has no significant effect on later disorder. Using first-order spatial- (and temporal-) lagged dependent variables, they find substantial spillover effects between neighborhoods. The authors’ intertemporal correlation tables suggest very high correlations for demographic variables, disorder (0.92–0.96), and cohesion (0.95–0.96), suggesting little change to be explained and potentially weak power of the tests ( Steenbeek & Hipp 2011 ).

Several related papers have examined collective efficacy and crime using panel data from the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), which collected survey data on 4,334 residents across 148 neighborhoods in Brisbane. Hipp & Wickes (2017) followed Sampson et al. (1997) in measuring collective efficacy as a composite of willingness to intervene, cohesion, and trust and controlling for differential distributions of informant characteristics across neighborhoods that may bias reports of collective efficacy. They estimated cross-lagged models for collective efficacy, violence, and neighborhood characteristics (e.g., disadvantage, residential stability, age, population density) and included spatially lagged neighborhood characteristics to control for spillover. They found that, contrary to collective efficacy theory, controlling for prior violence, collective efficacy is significantly associated with future violence—but in the wrong direction. This result held in models using five-year lags and two-year lags and in simultaneous equations using lagged dependent variables as instruments. They also found a small negative indirect effect of collective efficacy on violence through concentrated disadvantage. Although the authors did not present intertemporal correlations among variables, they reported stability coefficients of 0.82 for violence, suggesting modest change, which, combined with the sign flip for collective efficacy, may suggest weak power of statistical tests. It is noteworthy that Sampson (2012) reported evidence for a reciprocal relationship between violent crime and collective efficacy in Chicago using hierarchical cross-lagged panel models. This suggests that the divergent findings may be the result of contextual, rather than methodological, differences between the Brisbane and Chicago studies: Chicago is a larger city with more variation in violent crime.

Wickes & Hipp (2018) used similar models on the same ACCS data set but included three measures of collective efficacy—child-centered social control, reciprocated exchange, and exercise of informal control (attend a meeting, sign a petition, solve a problem with neighbors)—which they hypothesize should have independent effects on crime. They found reciprocal relationships between disadvantage, nearby disadvantage, and all three measures of informal control. Moreover, Wickes & Hipp (2018) found that, contrary to collective efficacy theory, no measure of collective efficacy consistently predicted future crime in the expected direction. Social ties were significantly associated with property crime and drug crime in the wrong direction, control expectations were negatively associated with drug crime only, and exercise of social control was negatively associated with violence only. Interestingly, at the bivariate level, child-centered control is significantly correlated (0.3–0.4) with all crime measures in the direction hypothesized by collective efficacy theory, while the other measures of social control are uncorrelated with all crimes (see appendix 2 in Wickes & Hipp 2018 ). This, with fairly high stabilities for violent crime and property crime, raises the issue of the power of tests of informal control as well as whether the models are controlling for different aspects of the same concept (collective efficacy).

Most studies of disorder, social control, and crime use data from large urban areas, which is consistent with the model of urban growth underlying social disorganization theory. Do results generalize to less-urban settings, where the dynamics of neighborhood residential patterns may be different? Hipp (2016) used block-group-level data from rural North Carolina to examine disorder, informal social control, and perceptions of neighborhood crime in three-wave cross-lagged panel models. Using conventional measures of social cohesion and collective efficacy, Hipp controlled for potential bias in neighborhood reports due to compositional differences in residents across neighborhoods. To measure crime, he asked respondents whether they may have seen or heard acts of violence, arrests, and drug dealing around their neighborhoods and then aggregated responses to the block group. The measures of disorder asked respondents their general impressions of the neighborhood (Do respondents believe neighbors take care of homes and respect property? Is there too much drug use in the neighborhood?).

Using a cross-sectional model, Hipp (2016) replicates Sampson & Raudenbush’s (1999) finding of collective efficacy negatively associated with crime and of both collective efficacy and cohesion negatively associated with disorder. In cross-lagged panel models, he found perceived disorder and crime negatively associated with future collective efficacy, which he interprets as evidence of updating: Respondents’ perceptions of crime and disorder signal weak social control, causing them to update their perceptions of collective efficacy downward (see also Matsueda & Drakulich 2016 ). Furthermore, in a main-effects model, Hipp found that, contrary to collective efficacy theory, neither collective efficacy, social cohesion, nor a composite of the two significantly predicted future perceived crime or disorder. He does, however, find evidence of an interaction effect between social cohesion and collective efficacy. By contrast, consistent with broken windows, disorder predicts future crime. This study provides perhaps the most direct support for broken windows over collective efficacy and contrasts with Sampson & Raudenbush’s (1999) findings. This divergence of findings may be due to differences in measures of crime and disorder (Hipp’s are notably weaker), in simultaneous equation models versus panel models, and in urban versus rural settings.

In sum, panel models find mixed results. In models of disorder and crime, research finds a modest effect of disorder on violence and robbery, even controlling for collective efficacy. Demolitions were modestly associated with future crime at addresses and microplaces but not at the tract level. Cross-lagged panel models find collective efficacy either unrelated to crime, positively related to crime in Brisbane, or moderated by cohesion in rural North Carolina.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Our review of recent causal claims about disorder, informal control, and crime finds a lack of consensus across studies. Turning first to causal links in models of informal social control ( Figure 2 ), some evidence suggests that crime undermines informal control, but this may be limited to robbery. With the exception of one panel study, most research using different designs finds that informal social control is negatively associated with future disorder. Research on the key proposition of collective efficacy and informal social control is mixed. Cross-sectional studies find strong inverse effects of informal control on criminal behavior in different cities in the United States and several other countries. Such studies are unable to address potential reciprocal relationships between informal control and crime, which could result in upward bias. Nonrecursive models address this issue, but those that identify collective efficacy with reciprocated exchange as an instrument find informal control generally affects crime, whereas those that use lagged informal control do not. Cross-lagged panel models, however, show little effect of collective efficacy on future crime in Brisbane or on disorder in Utrecht, and only an interaction effect with cohesion in rural North Carolina, drawing into question theories of informal control. Given that panel models explain change in crime, it could be that collective efficacy can explain variation in crime across neighborhoods but not over time. Alternatively, the panel data sets used may lack sufficient statistical power to detect effects of informal control on temporal variation in crime. Thus, to date, an important counterfactual remains unanswered: In a data set with sufficient change in key endogenous variables and sufficient statistical power of tests, would we find effects of informal social control on changes in crime and disorder?

Evidence on the causal links implied by broken windows theory ( Figure 1 ) is also mixed. The experimental studies of Keizer et al. (2008 , 2011 ) find disorder associated with minor norm violations in Groningen, but another study failed to replicate this result in Groningen while another found treatment heterogeneity by social capital in Germany. With one exception, cross-sectional studies find modest effects of combined social and physical disorder on neighborhood crime. Of the four studies testing the broken windows hypothesis that disorder fosters crime when controlling for informal control, one nonrecursive cross-sectional model found little effect in Chicago, whereas three cross-lagged panel models found modest but significant effects in Boston, rural North Carolina, and Brisbane. Experiments in Bern, Zurich, and New York, the panel study in North Carolina, and one nonrecursive model in Britain found disorder undermines future social control, whereas a second nonrecursive model failed to find a significant effect in Chicago. The positive results would suggest support for disorder affecting crime indirectly through informal control, except that, unlike cross-sectional studies, cross-lagged panel models find little effect of collective efficacy on crime.

In evaluating this research literature, we have come to five tentative conclusions about the relative merits of different research designs as implemented to date. First, individual-level field experiments of disorder on norm violations are promising for testing the specific behavioral principles underlying broken windows. Such experiments can approximate ignorability when conducted with care. The results of recent experiments, however, are questionable because of methodological weaknesses ( Wicherts & Bakker 2014 ). Furthermore, when applied to broken windows and informal control theories, these experiments lack consistency and external validity, and, therefore, to be relevant to criminological debates they must be augmented with studies of naturally occurring crime. Second, we have greater enthusiasm for field experiments that intervene in neighborhoods by manipulating urban blight ( Kondo et al. 2018 ). These experiments manipulate, in a policy-relevant way, the key concept of disorder and examine serious crime. Unfortunately, we could not find parallel interventions seeking to manipulate informal social control. Third, MTO studies, which found few effects of individual moves on crime while eliminating selectivity, are less useful for our task because they cannot disentangle disorder, informal control, and other neighborhood characteristics.

Fourth, we began assuming that well-specified nonrecursive models are stronger than cross-sectional recursive models but weaker than panel models. In this applied literature, however, nonrecursive models are only as valid as the identifying restrictions on IVs. Panel models, while superior in principle, require sufficient change in dependent variables and sufficient statistical power of tests, which may be lacking in applications. Statistical power may also be an issue in simultaneous equation models, given that the power of simultaneous parameters is dependent on, among other things, the strength of IVs ( Bielby & Matsueda 1991 ). Rather than treating such models as panaceas for the possibility of feedback effects, each study needs to be carefully examined for whether the data are up to the assumptions of the models. The model could be correct, but the data are insufficient to estimate the model’s parameters. Fifth, interference is often present in neighborhood models as revealed by spatial analyses; such studies, however, typically do not discuss the degree of bias resulting when interference is ignored.

Although we find mixed results on most key hypotheses, we can make a tentative assessment of where the preponderance of the evidence currently lies. First, informal social control appears to be negatively associated with crime and disorder in urban areas. The negative evidence from panel studies may be the result of inadequate power of tests. Second, disorder—particularly social disorder—appears to be positively associated with future crime and disorder. The causal mechanism could be the broken windows hypothesis that disorder signals weak neighborhood control, or that such disorder generates crime opportunities or conflict, as suggested by Branas et al. (2018) , O’Brien & Sampson (2015) , St. Jean (2007) , and Wheeler et al. (2018) . This association drops substantially when holding constant informal social control but appears not to drop to zero. Third, disorder appears to be negatively associated with future informal social control, implying the possibility of a small indirect effect of disorder on crime operating through informal social control, as suggested by broken windows.

These conclusions are tentative because they will likely change as more research is accumulated. We have deliberately stated these conclusions as empirical associations rather than causal effects because, taken as a whole, these studies of disorder, informal control, and crime remain far from approximating causality as defined by a potential outcomes approach. Consistency is a problem in most experiments, interference is an issue in MTO studies, and ignorability is questionable in most observational studies.

Because these research designs have distinct strengths and weaknesses, more studies within each design are called for, with the hope that consistent results emerge across disparate designs. Future research is needed to address shortcomings in the literature. Individual-level field experiments need to conduct power analyses to ensure sufficient power of tests and conduct experiments in multiple neighborhoods to increase external validity and examine treatment heterogeneity by neighborhood. Given the issues of insufficient change and weak statistical power of tests in neighborhood panel studies, researchers may want to consider modifying research designs. Larger samples, perhaps on smaller neighborhood units, are needed. If the focus is on relatively short-term change, as in most panel studies, studies might examine multiple cities undergoing dynamic change rather than studying older stable metropolitan areas. Within cities, neighborhoods exhibiting change in local organization, disorder, and crime might be oversampled and followed for longer periods, maximizing the likelihood of change. Incorporating neighborhood interventions into panel studies would further leverage change.

Innovative interventions at the neighborhood level, such as randomly assigned demolitions, cleanup campaigns, and greening programs, are needed to examine whether exogenous changes in neighborhood disorder affect crime and informal control. More pressing is the need for studies of informal social control that use experimental interventions to manipulate social capital and collective efficacy across neighborhoods. Finally, while we have focused on causality as the key issue in evaluating the empirical literature on disorder, informal control, and crime, we hope our evaluation will stimulate not only future empirical research but also the further development of theories of disorder, crime, and informal control.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research underlying this article was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-1625273) and the Royalty Research Foundation, University of Washington. Additional support came from a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development research infrastructure grant (P2C HD042828) to the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the funding agencies. We thank Jerald R. Herting and Robert J. Sampson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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broken windows theory  

Alisdair rogers,, noel castree,, rob kitchin.

A theory developed by James Wilson and George Kelling, which argued that areas showing signs of criminal activity propagate further crime, leading to the area’s eventual decline. The theory’s name is derived from the observation that a building with a couple of broken windows that are not repaired in a timely fashion attracts vandals who will smash the other windows. This will escalate into breaking into the building and squatting, or undertaking other illegal behaviour such as taking drugs, or cause other damage. The proposed solution is to maintain a certain level of crime fighting and repair/maintenance to establish a social norm and discourage additional criminal activity. In many cities this has led to a policy of ... ...

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Broken Windows Thesis

• Joshua C. Hinkle 5  
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Incivilities thesis ; Order maintenance

Few ideas in criminology have had the type of direct impact on criminal justice policy exhibited by the broken windows thesis. From its inauspicious beginnings in a nine-page article by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in The Atlantic Monthly , the broken windows thesis has impacted policing strategies around the world. From the “quality of life policing” efforts in New York City (Kelling and Sousa 2001 ) to “Zero Tolerance” policing in England (Dennis and Mallon 1998 ), police agencies around the world have embraced Wilson and Kelling’s idea that focusing on less serious offenses can yield important benefits in terms of community safety and prevention of more serious crime. Despite this broad policy influence, research on the theory itself has been relatively weak and has produced equivocal findings as will be detailed in this entry.

The Broken Windows Model

In a nutshell, the broken windows thesis (Wilson and Kelling 1982 )...

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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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Home › Evidence-Based Policing › What Works in Policing? › Review of the Research Evidence › Broken Windows Policing

• Review of the Research Evidence
• Seattle Police Case Study

Broken Windows Policing

What is Broken Windows Policing?

• Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety  (George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson,  Atlantic Monthly )
• What “Broken Windows” Policing Is  ( The Economist )

What is the Evidence on Broken Windows Policing?

• Can Policing Disorder Reduce Crime? (Anthony Braga, Brandon Welsh, and Cory Schnell, Campbell Collaboration systematic review [link to article version in  Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency )
• Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (George Kelling and Catherine Coles)
• Do Police Matter? An Analysis of the Impact of New York City’s Police Reforms  (George Kelling and William Sousa, Manhattan Institute)
• Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment (Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago Law Review)
• Study Finds Cracks in Broken Windows  (Rob McManamy,  University of Chicago Chronicle )
• Is Broken Windows Policing Broken?  (Debate between Bernard Harcourt and David Thacher,  Legal Affairs )
• Don’t Blame my ‘Broken Windows’ Theory for Poor Policing  (George Kelling, Politico)
• Special issue of  Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency :  “Reimagining Broken Windows: From Theory to Policy”

Seattle Police officersmage courtesy of Flickr user jmabel and used under a Creative Commons license.

The broken windows model of policing was first described in 1982 in a seminal article by Wilson and Kelling. Briefly, the model focuses on the importance of disorder (e.g., broken windows) in generating and sustaining more serious crime. Disorder is not directly linked to serious crime; instead, disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which then allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control.

The police can play a key role in disrupting this process. If they focus in on disorder and less serious crime in neighborhoods that have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, they can help reduce fear and resident withdrawal. Promoting higher levels of informal social control will help residents themselves take control of their neighborhood and prevent serious crime from infiltrating

Broken windows policing is listed under “What do we need to know more about?” on our  Review of the Research Evidence 

A recent systematic review by Braga, Welsh and Schnell (2015) found that policing strategies focused on disorder overall had a statistically significant, modest impact on reducing all types of crime.  This positive effect was driven by the success of place-based,  problem-oriented  interventions.  In contrast, there was no significant overall impact of aggressive order maintenance strategies.  Thus, they conclude that police can successfully reduce disorder and non-disorder crime through disorder policing efforts, but the types of strategies matter.

Not all of the interventions included in the Braga et al. (2015) review, however, are true tests of broken windows theory.  Indeed, the broken windows model as applied to policing has been difficult to evaluate for a number of reasons.

First, agencies have applied broken windows policing in a variety of ways, some more closely following the Wilson and Kelling (1982) model than others. Perhaps the most prominent adoption of a broken windows approach to crime and disorder has occurred in New York City. In other agencies though, broken windows policing has been synonymous with zero tolerance policing, in which disorder is aggressively policed and all violators are ticketed or arrested. The broken windows approach is far more nuanced than zero tolerance allows, at least according to Kelling and Coles (1996) and so it would seem unfair to evaluate its effectiveness based solely on the effectiveness of aggressive arrest-based approaches that eliminate officer discretion. Thus, one problem may be that police departments are not really using broken windows policing when they claim to be.

A second concern is how to properly measure broken windows treatment. The most frequent indicator of broken windows policing has been misdemeanor arrests, in part because these data are readily available. Arrests alone, however, do not fully capture an approach that Kelling and Coles (1996) describe as explicitly involving community outreach and officer discretion. Officers must decide whether an arrest is appropriate and many police stops and encounters with citizens in broken windows policing do not end in arrest. As opposed to a zero-tolerance policy focused only on arresting all minor offenders, Kelling and Coles (1996) describe a more community-oriented approach to partnering with residents and community groups to tackle disorder collectively in a way that still respects the civil liberties of offenders. Whether the NYPD was able to adopt this model successfully remains up for debate but it does suggest that the intervention is complex and difficult to evaluate.

Third, the broken windows model suggests a long term indirect link between disorder enforcement and a reduction in serious crime and so existing evaluations may not be appropriately evaluating broken windows interventions. If there is a link between disorder enforcement and reduction in serious crime generated by increased informal social control from residents, we would expect it would take some time for these levels of social control in the community to increase. Policing studies usually use short-follow up periods and so may not capture these changing neighborhood dynamics.

There is also no consensus on the existence of a link between disorder and crime, and how to properly measure such a link if it does indeed exist. For example,  Skogan’s (1990)  research in six cities did suggest a relationship between disorder and later serious crime, but Harcourt (2001) suggested in a re-analysis of Skogan’s (1990) data that there was no significant relationship between disorder and serious crime. Hence, there is no clear answer as to the link between crime and disorder and whether existing research supports or refutes broken windows theory.

There is much debate over the impact of New York policing tactics on reductions on crime and disorder in the 1990s. Broken windows policing alone did not bring down the crime rates (Eck & Maguire, 2000), but it is also likely that the police played some role. Estimates of the size of this role have ranged from large (Bratton & Knobler, 1998, Kelling & Sousa, 2001) to significant but smaller (Messner et al., 2007; Rosenfeld et al., 2007) to non-existent (Harcourt & Ludwig, 2006).

Tackling disorder has frequently been a tactic chosen by police in crime  hot spots . For example, in the  Braga et al. (1999)  problem-oriented policing hot spots study in Jersey City, NJ, officers used aggressive order maintenance as a strategy to reduce violent crime and results suggested significant positive results. Thus, we suspect that the tactics common in broken windows policing will be most successful when combined with knowledge about the small geographic areas where crime is highly concentrated. These hot spots approaches, however, should not be viewed as direct tests of broken windows theory.  A number of other strategies were also used in these interventions, including situational crime prevention efforts, which were shown to be the most effective strategy for reducing crime in the  Braga and Bond (2008)  study.

Finally, there is concern that any effectiveness of broken windows policing in reducing crime (where the evidence, as noted above, is mixed) may come at the expense of reduced citizen satisfaction and damage to citizen perceptions of the legitimacy of police.  See the  Community Policing and Procedural Justice  page for more on the importance of implementing effective strategies in ways that are viewed by citizens as fair.

Evidence-Based Policing Matrix

Studies from the  Evidence-Based Policing Matrix  incorporating some of the principles of broken windows policing:

Rigor : M = moderately rigorous; R = rigorous; VR = very rigorous

X-axis:  I = individual; G = group; MP = micro place; N = neighborhood/community; J = jurisdiction

Y-axis : F = focused; G= general

Z-axis : R = reactive, P = proactive, HP = highly proactive

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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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