Broken Windows theory of law enforcement

Davao is one of Asia’s 20 most liveable cities. Nobody dares smoke in public halls, knowing the police will clap them in jail. Puerto Princesa has the finest fish in the market. Vendors dutifully have their catch tested for traces of cyanide or dynamite, fearful of losing their license if they sell even one poisoned or blasted fry. Pagudpud at the tip of Ilocos Norte is the country’s cleanest town, where stiff fines await litterbugs. Drivers become careful upon entering Subic Freeport, where road rules are strictly enforced. Marikina has no sidewalk vendors or boorish jeepney drivers choking up traffic.

The five areas have become the envy of other cities. Their mayors, the police and the residents have joined hands to make their locales relatively free of violent crime. They know that by starting with the basics of courtesy, cleanliness or consciousness of other people’s needs, they make their own lives better.

They somehow have this concept of the Broken Windows Theory of keeping serious crimes at bay.

Broken Windows was the brainchild of American criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They theorized that "crime is the inevitable result of disorder." If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon more windows will be broken, and a sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street which it faces, sending the message that anything goes. In a big city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, street hawking, littering, panhandling or uncouth driving are, following Wilson and Kelling’s observation, like broken windows – invitations to more serious infractions of the law.

"Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions," the duo wrote. "If a neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place."

New York City was a crime haven in the ’80s. Officials tried the Broken Windows Theory to fight back by hiring Kelling as consultant of the Transit Authority. With the subway director, he started by cleaning up all train cars of graffiti. At the end of each ride, all coaches that were spray-painted by street gangs would be removed from service and scrubbed clean. The campaign lasted from 1984 to 1990, but the gangs eventually gave up. Not one of their murals saw the light of day anyway.

Kelling moved on to the next stage with the hiring of a new transit police chief who also belived in Broken Windows. They took on the fare-beaters who would jump over the turnstiles instead of paying the basic $1.25 fare. The Transit Authority used to not bother with the problem because of the small amount compared to the huge cost a solution would entail. But Kelling and the transit police also worried that decent people could turn into fare-beaters as well is it did nothing about the bums who did it by habit. They soon found out that the habitual fare-beaters they apprehended turned out to be carrying deadly weapons or wanted for more serious crimes. By breathing down their necks everyday, the police also wiped out subway muggings.

The transit police chief soon became the city police chief during the tenure of Mayor Rudolf Giuliani in 1994. Employing Broken Windows, they took on the aggressive panhandlers and "squeegee men" who would swarm on motorists at intersections and menacingly demand payment for washing car windows. For them, minor and seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes were tipping points for violent crime. Drug peddlers and muggers soon stayed clear of streets where New York cops cleaned of even the smallest offenders.

Nobody dares light a firecracker in Davao on New Year’s Eve, much more climb a porch on any other night. If the police would nab a stray smoker, more so will they crack the whip on thieves. Same in Puerto Princesa, where a fish that tests positive for dynamite would send the authorities searching the fisherman’s shack for explosives. No stranger would dare sell drugs in Pagudpud, where mere littering fetches a P2,000-fine. No one would dare steal a car in Subic Freeport, where mere failure to make a full-stop at an intersection leads to confiscation of one’s driver’s license. No one would think of snatching a cellphone in Marikina, where mere illegal parking ends up with the car towed away.

Employing Broken Windows requires system changes. Booking subway fare-beaters used to take six hours and ate into the time the transit police would otherwise spend patrolling. Kelling devised booking buses, in which fare-beaters would be photographed and finger-printed before the ride to jail. Mayors need to build markets where sidewalk vendors can continue selling their wares - and more jails to contain the hard-headed ones. They need to provide more public toilets if they want to stop urinating in public. Beggars will have to be put in livelihood training centers or sent back home to their provinces; street children, in orphanages.

Most of all, Broken Windows needs leadership by example – which is scarce during an election campaign. If decent people see candidates getting away with messing up walls and trees with campaign posters, they will think no one cares and no one is in charge.

Come to think of it, the mess we’re all in is caused by officials getting away with murder.

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