Crime

Broken Windows Policing

This powerful presentation from artist Molly Crabapple looks at the origins of the broken windows theory.

The kind of policing it led to and the subsequent connection to deaths at the hands of the police. As Crabapple explains, sociologists Wilson and Kelling introduced the theory in 1982 in an article they wrote for the Atlantic Monthly. They explained that, “Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken … one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs them nothing”.



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