Broken Windows

It was interesting to note that in the wake of the Boxing Day shooting in Toronto, the CBC called William Bratton for an interview and comment. William Bratton is the Chief of Police for Los Angeles and former Police Commissioner of New York City under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani and Bratton are widely known for cleaning up NYC, reducing crime rates to make the city the safest major city in the world. No small feat, considering the reputation New York had prior to Giuliani. Both men subscribed to the ‘Broken Window’ theory, a theory put forth by Professor James Wilson in 1982. Bratton was hired by the city of Los Angeles, partly because of his success in New York, in an attempt to clean up the policing and crime problem in the area served by the sometimes-infamous LAPD.

In searching for a solution to the distressing rise of gun violence in Toronto, someone has twigged to the Broken Windows philosophy of policing and crime reduction. The political talk and promises making their rounds now are partial solutions that have been tried in many cities across North America. While somewhat successful, they do not get to the root of the problem, an approach that the Broken Windows advocates.

Essentially, the approach is to get tough on small crimes to show that we care about our social rules and laws. Giuliani started with the graffiti painters and turnstile-jumpers in New York. Doubters laughed at this until they saw that when people realized that even small offences were taken seriously, the public and police were going to come down even harder on the ‘serious’ offences. The populace soon realized that the Mayor was determined to clean up their city and people began to cooperate with the police.

The reference to Broken Windows is that if no one cares whether a single window is broken, then no one cares about all the windows being broken. This escalates from windows to cars, to homes to violent crimes. (For more details go to www.brokenwindows.com ).

What strikes me as a parallel to the problems faced by NYC, and now Toronto, is that we seem to be slowly creeping towards more criminal activity in our small city. The number of people charged who have a repeat status or conditional release is a sign that the offenders are not getting the message the first time. They are in effect, breaking that one ‘window’ and seeing no consequence, breaking more ‘windows’.

The problem is not that our Police officers are not apprehending people, although they may not have the resources always to go after the minor vandals whoa re ‘breaking windows’, but that when brought before the courts, our prosecutors and judges do not subscribe to the Broken Windows theory. Chief William Bratton, in the radio interview, suggested that the gun problems in Toronto had all the signs of originating in the social milieu that fosters the Broken Windows syndrome.

Perhaps it is time that our whole justice system took a serious look at what other jurisdictions have done in addressing crime. It might throw a completely new light on our Youth Justice thinking.

For those business people who are interested in applying the same principles to improve their bottom line, they might want to read ‘Broken Windows, Broken Business’ by Michael Levine. Even a quick perusal of the articles about his book may catch your interest.