Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows PolicingHarvard University Press, 2005 M02 15 - 304 pages This is the first book to challenge the broken-windows theory of crime, which argues that permitting minor misdemeanors, such as loitering and vagrancy, to go unpunished only encourages more serious crime. The theory has revolutionized policing in the United States and abroad, with its emphasis on policies that crack down on disorderly conduct and aggressively enforce misdemeanor laws. The problem, argues Bernard Harcourt, is that although the broken-windows theory has been around for nearly thirty years, it has never been empirically verified. Indeed, existing data suggest that it is false. Conceptually, it rests on unexamined categories of law abiders and disorderly people and of order and disorder, which have no intrinsic reality, independent of the techniques of punishment that we implement in our society. How did the new order-maintenance approach to criminal justice--a theory without solid empirical support, a theory that is conceptually flawed and results in aggressive detentions of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens--come to be one of the leading criminal justice theories embraced by progressive reformers, policymakers, and academics throughout the world? This book explores the reasons why. It also presents a new, more thoughtful vision of criminal justice. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
The OrderMaintenance Approach | 23 |
Empirical Critique | 57 |
The Broken Windows Theory | 59 |
Policing Strategies and Methodology | 90 |
Theoretical Critique | 123 |
On Disorderly Disreputable or Unpredictable People | 127 |
The Implications of Subject Creation | 160 |
The Turn to Harm as Justification | 185 |
Rethinking Punishment and Criminal Justice | 215 |
An Alternative Vision | 217 |
Toward a New Mode of Political Analysis | 242 |
Notes | 251 |
Bibliography | 265 |
Index | 289 |
Rhetorical Critique | 181 |
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Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing Bernard E. Harcourt No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
aggressive analysis anti-gang loitering ordinance argued Banfield bathhouses behavior broken windows policing broken windows theory burglary carceral CCRB Chicago collective efficacy conduct correlation crime rates criminal justice Criminal Law curfews debate decline disciplinary disorder and crime disorderly dows theory drug Durkheim effect essay fact Feinberg focus focused Foucault gang gay bathhouses George Kelling harm arguments harm principle homeless homicides implemented increase James Q juridical juvenile gun possession juvenile snitching Kahan and Meares Law Review maintenance ment misdemeanor misdemeanor arrests Model Penal Code moral norm-focused NYPD offenses order-maintenance approach order-maintenance policing p-value panhandling percent persons police officers policing strategies political pornography problem proposed prostitution punishment quality-of-life initiative regulation relationship Report robbery victimization Sampson and Raudenbush Skogan snitching policy social meaning social norm society statistical stops and frisks street subject creation suggest tion variables Wilson and Kelling writings York City York Police Department
Popular passages
Page 115 - Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun...
Page 186 - The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion.
Page 186 - That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.
Page 133 - The fundamental codes of a culture -those governing its language, its schemas of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices - establish for every man, from the very first, the empirical orders with which he will be dealing and within which he will be at home' (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences [London: Tavistock Publications, 1970]).
Page 137 - But that role is not the one commonly perceived. It does not serve, or serves only very incidentally, to correct the guilty person or to scare off any possible imitators.
Page 24 - Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers. At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will...
Page 26 - As he saw his job, he was to keep an eye on strangers and make certain that the disreputable regulars observed some informal but widely understood rules. Drunks and addicts could sit on the stoops, but could not lie down. People could drink on side streets, but not at the main intersection. Bottles had to be in paper bags. Talking to, bothering, or begging from people waiting at the bus stop was strictly forbidden. If a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed...