New York's approach needs reexamining
In the early 1990s, when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York, he promised to be tough on crime, and to prove he was serious he hired Bill Bratton. Bratton, a former Boston chief of police worked with Giuliani and revolutionized the way the New York City Police Department approached crime.
The “broken windows theory” — based on a sociological supposition that assumes eradicating petty, lower-level crimes will combat crime at its highest levels — was implemented. And crime rates dropped, or so the popular story goes. But a new report re-examining the drop in crime has found there are some big holes in that story and the broken windows theory itself.
The study found that a general drop in the crime rate began around 1990, and when Giuliani was elected in 1994, the numbers were already significantly down. After 1994, they continued to fall at a similar rate. Although the report is unable to find a single cause for the drop, they did conclude that the broken windows approach did not miraculously solve New York’s crime problem. And if it didn’t work in New York, it probably isn’t helping in the other various locales that have implemented similar strategies.
There are fundamental problems with the theory behind the broken windows approach. It relies on heavy enforcement of minor and petty crimes. While it is imperative that police pursue these types of crimes, too much enforcement wastes resources, leads to overpopulation of prisons and puts a burden on the judicial system.
The underlying principles have also led to some questionable tactics like the “stop and frisk” program enacted by the NYPD. It gives officers the right to search anyone if they feel the person is committing, has committed or was about to commit a felony. This type of policing is unconstitutional and easily abused. In 2012, 89 percent of those stopped were innocent, and 87 percent of them were African-American or Latino. This type of policing is what is called for by the broken windows theory, but it undermines the trust between communities and its police.
Giuliani and Bratton also implemented the groundbreaking CompStat system, which keeps track of crime incidences and locations to increase accountability and get a better view of the overall crime situation. Unfortunately, this system has been abused and manipulated to help the statistics of a given area. In 2010, an NYPD officer released tapes of his superiors enforcing quotas on stop and frisks, in accordance with the broken windows theory, while admonishing officers not to report actual crimes like robbery.
The broken windows approach is deeply flawed and in need of re-examination. The trust of a community is crucial for police, and the tactics outlined hardly inspire that.
More Like This
Republican convention gets off to rocky start
By Ben Turner | July 20, 2016Expanded: Spring Valley graduate opens gourmet bakeshop
By Olivia Reszczynski | Jan. 12, 2016