Subscribe our newsletter and get notifications to stay update
If you’re familiar with the Broken Windows theory of policing, you may have learned of it, perhaps indirectly, from Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller “The Tipping Point,” published 25 years ago.In the book’s most-discussed chapter, Gladwell sought to explain why New York City, in the 1990s, suddenly experienced the greatest drop in violent crime ever recorded.
True, other cities saw crime decline in this period, but nowhere else did crime plunge so significantly and so swiftly.In just a few years, New York went from being one of the most dangerous and frightening big cities in America to one of the safest.
Why?Gladwell surveyed various possibilities having to do with the economy, changing demographics and the waning of the deadly crack trade, but found them unpersuasive.The real difference-maker, he said, was the NYPD’s commitment to Broken Windows policing — the disarmingly simple idea that serious crimes are more likely to occur in disorderly environments than orderly ones.
By upgrading people’s surroundings, the theory says, you can improve their behavior.Now, however, on the silver anniversary of “The Tipping Point,” Gladwell says he got the crime chapter wrong.He still believes that criminal behavior can be socially contagious, but he rejects the idea that police should enforce laws against relatively minor crimes with the hope of preventing major ones.
On a recent episode of his popular podcast “Revisionist History,” he says that Broken Windows was worse than ineffective; it was counterproductive, because it pointlessly ratcheted up tensions in minority communities.“I was wrong,” Gladwell says, dolefully.
“I’m sorry.”I have good news for Gladwell: He was right the first time.Though some progressives have attempted to discredit Broken Windows, a wealth of evidence suggests that the approach remains a powerful crime deterrent.Gladwell’s mea culpa is bound to sow confusion.
Like many police critics, he mistakenly conflates Br...