Broken Window Theory

The “Broken Window” theory attempts to explain why neighborhoods become so bad over time. It basically says that if small crimes are allowed to be committed it will build and become worst over time. The long-debated “broken windows” theory of social behavior argues that crime is linked to physical and social disorder in a community. In Lowell, this disorder took the form of trash-strewn streets, broken street lights, abandoned buildings, public drinking and loitering. In the course of the randomized research study, officials cleaned up half of the neighborhoods plagued by these sorts of problems. Researchers then monitored the results and found that there were 20 percent fewer calls to police from the spruced-up areas compared to areas receiving traditional police response.

(Bond, 2009 )

In the example above, a part of a neighborhood was cleaned up and the authorities were called fewer times. I think this type of action would fall under the proactive response decision. By cleaning up the streets, the police made the people of that neighborhood feel a lot safer. Many police officers also disliked foot patrol, but for different reasons: it was hard work, it kept them outside on cold, rainy nights, and it reduced their chances for making a “good pinch.” In some departments, assigning officers to foot patrol had been used as a form of punishment. And academic experts on policing doubted that foot patrol would have any impact on crime rates; it was, in the opinion of most, little more than a sop to public opinion.

But since the state was paying for it, the local authorities were willing to go along. Five years after the program started, the Police Foundation, in Washington, D. C., published an evaluation of the foot-patrol project. Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot-patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and seemed to take fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (staying at home with the doors locked, for example). (KELLING, 1982)

This example is also a more proactive approach, by putting patrol officers in the neighborhood on foot patrol; the people became so lax in their community that they didn’t take the simple precautions to protect themselves from being victims. After seeing both sides of the proactive approach I would still choose this route. In this system the police and the community are in harmony; thus when a crime does occur the people of the community will be less hesitant to help out