Tim Noah on "Broken Windows" here:
There's a lengthy quote from the original "Broken Windows" paper in the linked article, as follows:
A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.
At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don't get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.
Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion.
It occurs to me, reading this, that the sort of aggressive policing represented by "stop & frisk" doesn't actually address any of the so-called "broken windows" referred to above – it doesn't restore the values and behaviors that supposedly existed in the "stable neighborhood" before its decline." Adults don't scold kids much more frequently; people don't ask sleeping drunks to move along any more often; merchants don't ask teenagers - or Occupy members - to move. They call the police.
In fact, it was suggested last Wednesday at the Civic Association by a long-time Red Hook resident that calling the police was the appropriate response for the shopkeeper at Fine Fare, because it enabled him to avoid an escalating conflict. (Oh, hell, I'll just name him: Jay McKnight.) We have, in effect, outsourced these aspects of our community to men with guns and badges, and have concurrently criminalized behaviors that are the inevitable by-product of living in close proximity to one another. We will always have drunks and rowdy teenagers and litterers, in some degree. We didn't always use to arrest them, and we certainly didn't always use to throw people up against walls pre-emptively on the off chance (most charitably, one in nine) that they might sometime become rowdy or drunk.
Then again, maybe we did do that, and I just didn't realize it was a problem.
Then again, maybe we did do that, and I just didn't realize it was a problem.
And so, the Stop & Frisk variant of "Broken Windows" policing doesn't actually restore the "stable neighborhood." It introduces an element that perhaps contains the instability by force. And in doing so, it adds its own inhospitality to the neighborhood. Consider the latter part of the quote again:
... it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.
I suppose, for some number of us, the nearly-random stops and searches of of neighbors makes us feel more safe to go out. But for the portion of the population, approaching 20 percent or so, who are stopped and questioned for having the temerity to walk on the sidewalk outside their homes, it's hard to believe this increases their likelihood of engaging with the community. For that segment of the population, and their friends, the criminal invasion is merely augmented by men and women in blue.
To put it another way: In the 76th Precinct, misdemeanor assaults occur at the rate of slightly less than one per day. That's the entire precinct, not just Red Hook. If we counted the portion of Stop & Frisks not leading to arrests as misdemeanor assaults - which I think is not unreasonable - the rate would increase by something on the order of 400%.
This looks less like fixing broken windows than it does breaking other windows to even the score.