Abandoned two cars in different neighborhoods (Bronx, NYC and Palo Alto, CA) with hoods up and no license plates.
NYC car vandalized within 10 minutes; Palo Alto car untouched for a week.
Zimbardo smashed the Palo Alto car, after which it was quickly destroyed.
Demonstrated how neglected property can become a target for vandalism.
Basis for the "broken windows" theory.
George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson
Criminologists who expanded on Zimbardo's study.
They Wrote an article for The Atlantic. They suggested that visible signs of disorder (e.g., broken windows, graffiti) signal that a neighborhood is uncared for.
Proposed that addressing minor issues could prevent major crimes.
Kelling: "Once you begin to deal with the small problems in neighborhoods, you begin to empower those neighborhoods," . . . Communities get strengthened once order is restored or maintained, and it is that dynamic that helps to prevent crime."
Suggested police shift focus from major crimes to maintaining order.
Rudy Giuliani
NYC Mayor elected in 1993, adopted broken windows policing and promising to reduce crime and clean up the streets.
Focused on cleaning up the subway system; crime rates fell, and murder rates plummeted.
NYC Subway System
Giuliani and Bratton (police commissioner) first focused on cleaning up the subway system.
Police cracked down on turnstile jumpers and vandals.
Bernard Harcourt
Columbia University law professor.
Noted crime was already declining before Giuliani and broken windows policing.
Discussed "reversion to the mean" and critiqued Kelling's 2001 study.
“Reversion To The Mean”
Harcourt found the evidence supporting the broken windows theory might be flawed. He reviewed the study Kelling had conducted in 2001, and found the areas that saw the largest number of misdemeanor arrests also had the biggest drops in violent crime and says the earlier study failed to consider what's called a "reversion to the mean."
Harcourt: "Basically, the idea is if something goes up a lot, it tends to go down a lot."
Kelling acknowledges that broken windows may not have had a dramatic effect on crime.
Police Misconduct
Harcourt: "We immediately saw a sharp increase in complaints of police misconduct. Starting in 1993, what you're going to see is a tremendous amount of disorder that erupts as a result of broken windows policing, with complaints skyrocketing, with settlements of police misconduct cases skyrocketing, and of course with incidents, brutal incidents, all of a sudden happening at a faster and faster clip."
“Stop And Frisk”
Grew out of broken windows policing; embraced by NYC after Mayor Michael Bloomberg was elected in 2001.
Involved stopping, questioning, and searching anyone who looked suspicious.
In 2008, police made nearly 250,000 stops in New York for what they called furtive movements. Only one- fifteenth of 1 percent of those turned up a gun.
In August of 2013, a federal district court found that New York City's stop and frisk policy was unconstitutional because of the way it singled out young black and Hispanic men.
Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush
Chicago researchers who analyzed perceptions of social disorder.
Found that people perceived more disorder in neighborhoods with more African-Americans, even with the same amount of graffiti and litter.
Eric Garner
Died in July 2014 after a confrontation with NYPD officers.
Officers used a chokehold (banned by NYPD) while arresting him for selling loose cigarettes.
His death sparked protests and highlighted distrust between police and African-American communities.