Social Differences and Broken Windows Theory Essay

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Social and Cultural Differences

As The Economist (2008) reports, the idea that graffiti and litter can lead to more crime is an old one that was first put forward in the 1980s. The Broken Windows theory of Wilson and Kelling (1982) argued that neighborhoods that are not taken care of physically and that let acts of vandalism go on without cleaning them up or that suffer from too many abandoned buildings where there is no sense of ownership or responsibility will naturally attract crime because of the community’s lack of self-worth and general indifference. This indifference can lead to an escalation of crime from petty crime to more serious crime. The essence of the theory is that a community can deter crime by taking responsibility for itself and policing itself in the sense that it shows community pride in keeping its streets and homes clean and showing vandals and other delinquents that their activities will not be tolerated or promoted through silence. Recently Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen “deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave”—and the result was that Broken Windows Theory was proven correct: the small crimes rate doubled (Economist, 2008). 

Crime prevention is critical to keeping communities safe and free from harm—however not every country and its culture are alike, and applying a theory that originated in one country and culture necessitates that the theory deal with issues related to the social and cultural differences in the new country.

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This is because the new social and cultural differences serve as new variables that may be factors in affecting the outcome of test. For instance, if a theory about children getting sick when they are exposed to coughing in that room is developed in one classroom where all the children come from homes that are in poor condition, the children’s background will play a part in their development of colds. If the same theory is applied in a classroom where all the children come from well-taken care of homes, the results may differ and the new theory would have to be altered to address the new inputs. In areas where poverty is rampant, communities might suffer severely from what Broken Windows theory identifies as a kind of domino-effect: small crime leads to more and bigger crime; it starts with broken windows and leads to drugs and violence. However, if the theory were to be tested in a country where this type of expression was common, the results might differ.

Nonetheless, as the Economist (2008) points out, there may still be some merit to what was explored in the testing of the theory by Kees Keizer and colleagues: after all, “the researchers’ conclusion is that one example of disorder, like graffiti….....

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