Broken Window Theory

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Janibell Perez Professor Mark Criminal Justice Systems and the Community Broken Windows Critique This critique is based on the “Broken Windows” The policy and neighborhood safety by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. After reading this article I have come to the conclusion that the authors overall purpose and meaning was to show how disorder is capable of sustaining and generating serious crimes in a neighborhood. The authors James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling want to let the reader know that disorder is not the main factor of crime itself. When there is disorder in a neighborhood the residents seem to withdraw to their houses and participate less in the community, because of this crime starts to happen when residents don’t participate in the area. The overall purpose and meaning of this article is to send the message that police officers can play a unique part in disrupting the disorder process. If police officers focus on less serious crime and disorder of a neighborhood then serious crimes like felonies will not be able to surface as much. This is because the community will participate more and become more social, and they will develop their own set of rules. A main section of this article that I want to point out is the idea that foot patrol decreases crime rate. In the article it states that police officers didn’t like the idea of foot patrol too much but because they did it relationships with the community was formed and people were less afraid to go outside. This ties into the main idea of the “Broken Window” theory because once the community saw that there was less disorder outside, they’re social behavior began to change. The article did a good job of mentioning a subculture within the communities that had more foot patrol police officers. This explained that even though there was still crime in the area the crime was controlled and

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