Broken Windows Policing Analysis

In the wake of rising protests and criticism of police after the deaths of Eric Garner, and Akai Gurley, George L. Kelling, a criminologist and professor, and William J. Bratton, former police commissioner of the New York City Police, come together to present their argument for Broken Windows Policing (BWP). This article they collaborated on mainly focuses on topics that certain “police critics” have brought up against BWP and attempts to prove that BWP is something that should continue to be both practiced, and invested in. Most of these topics are actually not attacking the efficacy of BWP but its consequences, such as Search Question and Frisk (this method of BWP is known as SQF) and counterproductive, BWP leads to over incarceration, BWP

One concern is that BWP leads to over incarceration, which Kelling and Bratton respond to this by admitting that, yes, it does; however, the crimes people are being imprisoned for are far less serious than those that are being prevented by BWP and their sentences are thus much shorter. But, the main concern is that SQF, and therefore BWP is inadmissibly discriminatory towards minorities. Once again, Kelling and Bratton give ground by not defending the abhorrent results of the 2011 SQF’s, which resulted in over 700,000 stops and only a 6% success rate. They instead talk about how much their methods have improved with far fewer stops and a higher success rate. This may seem like an odd way to address the claim of discrimination, but the point is that they now are making much more calculated decisions when stopping people, and not just frisking minorities at random. Their other claim is far more direct; they state that Quinnipiac University ran a poll following Garner’s death and found that even though many minority respondents disagreed with how the police acted in that situation, they still showed a majority support for BWP. Basically, “how can it be discriminatory if the minorities were supposedly discriminating against are approving of our