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...
References
Agnew, R. (2008). Strain Theory. In V. Parrillo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of social problems. (pp. 904-906). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Economist. (2008). Can the can. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/node/12630201
Wilson, J., Kelling, G. (1982). Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now