Many police agencies across the United States are dealing with increasing violence in their jurisdictions while also facing political pressures to limit enforcement activities. Within this context, order-maintenance policing—the policing method associated with the ”broken windows” hypothesis—has become a contentious topic. Proponents of order-maintenance point to its potential benefits, arguing that the tactic is effective at preventing crime and disorder in neighborhoods. Others, however, point to possible concerns that arise when officers proactively confront individuals who are committing minor offenses, suggesting that such encounters can produce needless arrests or can escalate and result in unnecessary uses of force.
Order-Maintenance Policing as a Mechanism for Managing Disorder
At its core, order-maintenance policing recognizes the importance of managing minor offenses in communities. In the original “broken windows” article, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling explained how minor offenses in neighborhoods, if ignored, can invite other disorderly behaviors, generate fear among residents, and substantially reduce the quality of life in public places.1 Additionally, although it is not inevitable, areas with consistently high levels of minor offenses are often vulnerable to serious criminal activity because offenders feel more at ease at locations with permissive atmospheres toward disorder. The policy implications of the “broken windows” hypothesis are clear—if police and community members are able to proactively manage minor offenses (i.e., order-maintenance), they can help to reduce fear, maintain the quality of life in neighborhoods, and potentially prevent serious crime from developing into a significant problem.
Many police professionals (including the authors) and community members have witnessed firsthand the effectiveness of order-maintenance when it is put into practice properly. In the New York City subways of the late 1980s, efforts to manage minor offenses such as aggressive panhandling, graffiti, and turnstile jumping resulted in safer, less threatening, and more orderly conditions for subway passengers. When order-maintenance was more broadly implemented in New York City during the early 1990s, violence dropped dramatically—murders, for example, decreased by over 70 percent by the end of the decade from a high of over 2,200. For context, this means that literally thousands of lives were saved. Proactively addressing disorder essentially limited the opportunities for people to engage in more serious offending.
Importantly, academic research on order-maintenance—when viewed in its entirety—generally supports the value of policing efforts to manage disorder in communities. Research shows an association between disorder and people’s fear of victimization, suggesting that efforts to manage disorder have intrinsic value in terms of improving perceptions of safety in neighborhoods.2 In addition, although individual studies vary, systematic reviews of the most rigorous academic evaluations demonstrate crime reduction benefits of order-maintenance policing.3 In other words, the best scientific evidence suggests that proactively paying attention to disorder can have a positive impact on the quality of life in neighborhoods—and may also effectively deter serious crime and violence.
Order-Maintenance Is Not about Making Arrests for Minor Offenses
Despite these apparent benefits, critics of order-maintenance policing argue against the strategy. Order-maintenance has been associated with terms such as “zero-tolerance,” “stop-and-frisk,” and “arresting juveniles for low-level offenses”—phrases that reflect a concern that the strategy is overly heavy-handed in terms of enforcement practices. Critics contend that the strategy can generate frivolous arrests for relatively innocuous offenses. If this is so, order-maintenance runs the risk of alienating community members from the police and can be particularly problematic if it disproportionately impacts those living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Worse still, if an officer proactively stops someone for a minor offense, the interaction has the potential to escalate if the officer lacks the skills and training to properly manage the encounter.
The authors believe that many of these criticisms are based on misapplications and misinterpretations of the principles of order-maintenance. Those familiar with the original “broken windows” article will know that order-maintenance policing was never meant to be a high arrest strategy, and no one with a proper understanding of it would ever suggest that it should be. On the contrary, order-maintenance, when correctly understood and implemented, encourages the appropriate use of discretion when paying attention to disorder. Officers often have many options available to them when they encounter disorderly persons or minor offenders. Cops can issue warnings, educate people about laws and regulations, remind individuals about penalties for inappropriate or illegal behavior, counsel juveniles, or refer offenders to services (to the extent that services exist), among many other possibilities. These options do not involve formal enforcement, yet they are often enough to manage the problem and deter future disorder.
“Officers should be provided with training that promotes de-escalation techniques so that they have the skills to properly manage proactive engagement with minor offenders.”
To be sure, formal enforcement options, such as arrest or citation, are often available to the officer, but these should be used sparingly and only as a last resort when other means of managing disorder problems are no longer appropriate. While officers can use the possibility of arrest as a legal tool to encourage disorderly persons to stop their behavior, arrest should not be considered the desired outcome.
Many officers are naturally comfortable handling minor offenses informally, and academic analyses of community-police interactions support the notion that order-maintenance policing is highly discretionary.4 Officers consider many factors when managing disorder—the seriousness of the offense, the level of aggressiveness and demeanor of the disorderly person, the vulnerability of a victim, and the relative harm of the offense to the community, among other considerations.
Proactive order-maintenance works, but it’s important to recognize that any community-police encounter involves complex dynamics. Departmental policies, internal culture, and officer training should therefore encourage the proper use of discretion for officers implementing order-maintenance. In addition, officers should be provided with training that promotes de-escalation techniques so that they have the skills to properly manage proactive engagement with minor offenders.
Order-Maintenance Is Entirely Consistent with the Principles of Community Policing
Another criticism of order-maintenance policing is that it is somehow antithetical to community policing. Again, this is the result of a misunderstanding of the original “broken windows” article. One of the essential principles of the “broken windows” theory is that police should remain responsive to the needs of individual communities. Most cities have a diverse range of communities, and different neighborhoods have varying capacities to absorb disorder. Some behaviors that are generally acceptable in one place might be viewed differently in another. How disorder is policed in one part of the community, therefore, may be very different from how it is policed in another part.
In Las Vegas, for example, many behaviors that occur along Las Vegas Boulevard (i.e., the Strip) or the Fremont Street Experience—both lively sections of Clark County, Nevada, that feature resort-hotels, casinos, restaurants, shopping malls, entertainment venues, and other attractions—would be considered serious problems in quieter business or residential districts. Public alcohol use is common along the Strip, for instance, and aggressive panhandlers, street vendors, hustlers, vagrants, and street performers are often present. While these behaviors could be become problematic if they are not kept in check, they are not considered to be major concerns along the otherwise vibrant Strip corridor. In other words, there is so much life on the Strip that it can tolerate a substantial amount of disorder without those offenses posing a significant threat to the operation of businesses or to people’s feelings of security. Those types of disorders in other neighborhoods, however, would cause major upheaval to social, economic, and community life.
Similar to how different neighborhoods possess different capacities to tolerate disorder, individual people perceive minor offenses differently. In a recent survey, pedestrians were asked to rate the seriousness of different types of disorder they had seen along the Strip and on Fremont Street.5 The survey found that women were more likely than men to perceive disorderly behavior as a problem, and older respondents were more likely than younger respondents to consider minor offenses to be problematic. Importantly, the biggest differences on the survey were between those who identified themselves as “local to the Las Vegas Valley” and those who identified themselves as “tourists”—locals perceived disorder to be a significantly greater problem than tourists. Locals, it would seem, have a greater sense of ownership over public places and are therefore more likely to be worried about minor offenses occurring in their presence. Visitors, on the other hand, may view disorder as part of the tourist experience and are therefore less likely to be concerned.
Obvious implications for police policy and practice result when (1) different places have varying capacities to absorb disorder and (2) individuals differ in terms of how they perceive minor offenses. Police need to be aware of the amount of disorder in neighborhoods, they need to be cognizant of community demand for something to be done about it, and they need to respect the rights of the individuals who use public places. In Las Vegas, this means that disorder is handled differently along The Strip and Fremont Street than it is handled in residential neighborhoods such as the historic West Side, Summerlin, or Sunrise Manor. Las Vegas is certainly not unique in this regard —the nature of virtually all U.S. cities is such that there is no “one-size-fits-all” disorder management plan that can be applied to every community. The idea that police should respect both the demands of the community and the rights of the individual is entirely consistent with the principles of community policing.
Order-maintenance is generally most effective when it is implemented by officers familiar with the community and when the strategy is clearly communicated to residents. Officers from citywide units who are directed to perform “sweeps” of minor offenses in a neighborhood for a short period of time are rarely effective in the long term and can possibly damage relationships with community members who are unfamiliar with the officers and unaware of the reasons for their presence. Patrol officers assigned to specific beats, however, are better situated to develop connections with residents, gauge concerns about disorder on those beats, and discuss order-maintenance strategies. This gives the community a voice in terms of order-maintenance practices and helps to build trust and respect—all key elements of procedural justice.
Conclusion
As discussed in this article, (1) order-maintenance is a proactive tactic effective at reducing fear, preventing more disorder, and deterring serious crime and violence; (2) order-maintenance, correctly applied, encourages the proper use of officer discretion and is therefore not—nor should be—a high-arrest strategy; and (3) order-maintenance, properly implemented, is responsive to community demands as well as individual needs.
In many respects, police leaders today are faced with a reemergence of crime and quality-of-life issues. Managing these issues begins with gaining an understanding of the community’s priorities and then formulating strategies and tactics. Police leaders shouldn’t be surprised if many communities’ priorities involve managing minor offenses—this means that paying attention to the little things is really important. d
Notes:
1James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling,“Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” The Atlantic (March 1982): 29–38.
2Catherine E. Ross and Sung Joon Jang, “Neighborhood Disorder, Fear, and Mistrust: The Buffering Role of Social Ties with Neighbors,” American Journal of Community Psychology 28, no. 4 ( August 2000): 401–420.
3Anthony A. Braga, Brandon C. Welsh, and Cory Schnell, “Can Policing Disorder Reduce Crime? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 52, no. 4 (July 2015): 567–588.
4William H. Sousa, “Paying Attention to Minor Offenses: Order Maintenance Policing in Practice,” Police Practice and Research: An International Journal 11, no. 1 (2010): 45–59.
5Jonathan Birds and William Sousa, Perceptions of Disorder: Results from Two Las Vegas Tourist Locations, Research in Brief Series, 2015-01 (Las Vegas, NV: UNLV Center for Crime and Justice Policy, 2015).
Please cite as
Andrew Walsh and William Sousa, “Preventing Crime Involves Paying Attention to the Little Things,” Police Chief Online, March 22, 2023.
