We used the image of broken windows to explain how neighborhoods might decay into disorder and even crime if no one attends faithfully to their maintenance. If a factory or office window is broken, passersby observing it will conclude that no one cares or no one is in charge. In time, a few will begin throwing rocks to break more windows. Soon all the windows will be broken, and now passersby will think that, not only is no one in charge of the building, no one is in charge of the street on which it faces. Only the young, the criminal, or the foolhardy have any business on an unprotecred avenue, and so more and more citizens will abandon the street to those they assume prowl it.
Small disorders lead to larger and larger ones, and perhaps even to crime.
A rights-oriented legal tradition does not easily deal with this problem. The judge finds it hard to believe that one broken window is all that important or that the police should be empowered to exert their authority on people who might break more windows. Kelling has seen this process unfold and understands the competing values at stake. Through his research on the history of policing in America and his work advising public agencies, notably the New York City Transit Authority, he has learned how one can deal with the problem of order in public spaces at minimal cost in individual liberty. Coles has studied the law on this matter, and sets forth with admirable clarity its hopelessly unclear condition.