“BROKEN WINDOWS” POLICING UNJUSTIFIED
May 6, 2015
On the bright side, recent
events in Baltimore have drawn “broken windows” policing into question. The theory is that concerted efforts at
arresting people for minor offenses and for not taking care of their property
interrupt the decline of neighborhoods into more serious crime. Yesterday, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton,
defended the policy on grounds of its effectiveness in serious crime prevention
(http://www.wsj.com/articles/nypd-commissioner-william-bratton-arrests-for-minor-offenses-in-nyc-on-decline-1430407918
). Unfortunately, that claim was left
unquestioned in by the news media.
There are eight “index” crimes
that law enforcement agencies across the country are asked to report:
murder/non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary,
theft, auto theft, and arson. In 1993,
NYPD adopted a data processing system called CompStat, now installed many
places around the world. Police commanders
get daily printouts. When figures first
came out indicating impressive decreases in “major crimes,” Bill Chambliss and
Roland Chilton found for instance that reported suicides had dramatically increased
which Chambliss used to illustrate how CompStat figures were rigged from the
outset (in
Power, Politics, and Crime, 1999,
at p.43). Looking back at old blog
posts, I found a link to a 2011 interview with former NYPD officer Adrian Schoolcraft,
who recorded both demands to meet arrest targets for a variety of petty
offenses, and to increase stops, and not to report index crimes of robbery and
rape. I highly recommend this
introduction to the art of using computer technology to make your crime and
arrest numbers, at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/transcript
. It is an instance of the general
principle that crime and criminality figures can more readily be explained as
counters’ behavior than as representative of the behavior of those
counted. Under the CompStat regime,
members of communities of color become valued as suspects, and dismissed as
complainants, with no demonstrable justification. “Broken windows” policing is
counterproductive, period. Love and
peace, hal
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