Private Conflict, Not Broken Windows
Why community policing should focus on helping to resolve personal and domestic disputes, not signs of physical decay.

"More than three decades ago, The Atlantic published a path-breaking essay that introduced the theory of 'broken windows' to a broad audience. Its authors, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, advocated for a fundamental shift in law enforcement: away from simply apprehending criminals and toward mitigating the visual symbols of urban disorder like loitering, public drunkenness, panhandlers, 'squeegee men,' run-down buildings, and litter- and graffiti-strewn neighborhoods. Their basic metaphor was captured in a simple phrase: 'One broken window becomes many.'

The latest study by criminologists Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien and Robert J. Sampson, published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, adds yet more nuance to the critical debate that continues to surround broken windows theory today. The study poses three key questions: To what degree does disorder contribute to the ongoing decline of a neighborhood? If so, what features of it matter? And what are the major pathways that connect disorder to neighborhood decline and, ultimately, to crime?"

And...

Report: States With Stand Your Ground Laws Have More Homicides
If you’re interested in reducing violent crime, homicides, or racial bias, you should repeal Stand Your Ground laws, according to new recommendations from an American Bar Association Task Force. In a diplomatic fashion, the 62-page preliminary report hedges from calling for the outright repeal of the controversial “shoot first” provisions, but instead suggests that the laws are a “solution searching for a problem,” that they are associated with increased homicide rates and reinforce racial bias, and that any state concerned with these problems should probably do something about it.

Disaster Sociologists Study How Hurricane Sandy Changed Life In New York
Hurricane Sandy has ushered in big changes all over the New York metropolitan region, from seawalls to city ordinances. It may have also changed things in the Ivory Tower.

Supported by New York University and its Institute for Public Knowledge, a young cadre of social scientists calling themselves the Superstorm Research Lab is quietly rethinking business as usual in academia. Though their work fits squarely in the established field of disaster sociology, the Research Lab is deeply invested in pushing the boundaries between scholarly research and efforts to make real change.

Read the white paper:  A Tale of Two Sandys

Sex Offender Laws Have Gone Too Far
"Our draconian policies about sex offenses reflect our ignorance of them."

"Is the American approach to sex registration working? Who goes on the registries, for how long, and for what kinds of crimes? Do the answers suggest that they are helping to keep kids safe—or sweeping in too many people and stoking irrational fears?"

Author of "Broken Windows" Policing Defends His Theory
In 1982, after another year of record lawlessness in New York City, two college professors advanced — or, more accurately, rekindled — a plausibly uncomplicated theory that would revolutionize law enforcement in the city: Maintaining public order also helps prevent crime.

European Court Finds CIA Interrogation Techniques "Amounted To Torture"
The European Court of Human Rights concludes that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques - specifically approved by John Yoo and Jay Bybee for use by the CIA on Abu Zubaydah at a Polish black site - amounted to torture.

The Draw Of the Undertow:  Extremity, Otherness And Emergent Harm In Gaming And Pornography
"My own interest in the cultural and social impact of video games probably began with morally conflicted feelings while playing Grand Theft Auto III for the first time. I remember experiencing a real sense of surprise at the possibility of running over pedestrians and perhaps more so, a sense of worry at what other, younger, players might take from the game. The game felt like an incredibly violent space, a bleak vision of a city without moral codes or goodness, a space most of all where we were being goaded to bring out our more callous side, running over the homeless in tunnels, sniping at the unsuspecting or beating and stabbing to advance, or just for the sheer hell of it."

 

Policing

Stand Down
All too often, the victims of police shootings are people with mental illness. One American city has found a solution.

Broken Windows Policing Kills People
Senseless deaths are a predictable result of cracking down on minor offenses.

See also:  Daily News Analysis Finds Racial Disparities In Summons For Minor Violations In "Broken Windows" Policing

Sovereign Citizens seen As Top Terrorist Threat By US Law Enforcement 
The sovereign citizen movement is considered the top threat for domestic terrorism, according to a survey of state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies.

Islamist extremists and militia/patriot groups round out the top three threats to communities in the United States considered most serious by 364 officers of 175 state, local, and tribal law enforcement entities, according to a survey conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

Link to Survey 

Zero Tolerance and Broken Windows Policing Criminalizes Homeless and Poor People ... and Can Kill Them

The recent death of homeless veteran Jerome Murdough in a Rikers Island cell should be more than a temporary debate in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it New York media cycle that often desensitizes us to tragedies. I know it hit close to home for myself — Mr. Murdough sought refuge the night of his arrest in an East Harlem public housing staircase three blocks from my home and across the street from my where my kids go to school. When sleeping in a staircase, I thought, lands you in a Rikers cell, something is wrong.

Murdough's death laid bare some of our collective disregard for the poor as well as an aggressive police department with an obsession for law and order rivaled only by military dictatorships and science fiction characters (i.e., RoboCop, Judge Dredd). Is it enough to have roundtable discussions lamenting the case of Mr. Murdough as one of someone slipping through the cracks? What happened to him is the not-so unpredictable outcome of a society heavily invested in enforcement by way of zero-tolerance policing and criminal justice system. It's an approach that is neither humane nor sustainable. But as some debate what stop-gap reforms or long term legislation might be crafted, let's not lose sight of how Murdough arrived at the cell he would die in: the NYPD and the low-level crime-focused Broken Windows theory that guides it.

Read on....

It’s Time to End ‘Broken Windows’ Policing

One of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first acts after being elected this past November was to reappoint William Bratton as commissioner of New York City’s police department. Bratton’s reputation rests on his work, in New York and Los Angeles, as a proponent of so-called “broken windows” policing. He asserts that aggressively going after very minor offenses—not merely misdemeanors but infractions like littering, sitting on stoops and carrying open beer cans—will bring the overall rate of violent crime down as well. It is this program that has led to the stopping, frisking and general harassing of millions of New Yorkers, the overwhelming majority without probable cause.

There were 4.4 million stops by the NYPD between 2004 and 2012. Ten percent of those stops were of whites, 84 percent were of blacks and Latinos. Of those 4.4 million stops, only 6 percent led to an arrest, 6 percent to a summons. The remaining 88 percent resulted in no other action—in other words, they involved unequivocally innocent people.

Read on...

What If the “Broken Windows” Theory Were Applied to Wall Street?

James Q. Wilson's famous “broken windows” theory led to strict policing of working class behavior. What if his ideas were applied to Wall Street?

James Q. Wilson, who died recently, was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called "broken windows." The metaphor explains what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down, fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community lled to widespread serious blue collar crime. Wilson urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing.

New York City’s police strategy embraced “broken windows,” making it a priority to respond to even minor offenses that upset the community – like “squeegee men,” graffiti, and street prostitution. Reported blue collar crime fell. It also fell sharply in most other cities, which did not implement “broken windows” programs, but Wilson and the NYPD got the credit and popular fame. Wilson became one of the most famous blue collar criminologists in the world.

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James Q. Wilson dies at 80; pioneer in 'broken windows' approach to improve policing

A social scientist, James Q. Wilson helped launch a revolution in law enforcement with the idea that tackling signs of community decay was crucial to making neighborhoods safer.

James Q. Wilson, a social scientist who helped launch a revolution in law enforcement as the co-inventor of the "broken windows" theory — the idea that eradicating graffiti, public drunkenness and other signposts of community decay was crucial to making neighborhoods safer — died Friday in Boston. He was 80.

The cause was complications of leukemia, according to his son, Matthew Wilson.

Often called the "father of community policing," Wilson, who taught for many years at UCLA and Pepperdine University, was a widely admired public intellectual who wrote more than two dozen books on American government, criminal justice and moral issues. Former Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once called him "the smartest man in the United States."

Read on...