Broken Windows, Broken Rules

            Last month I had the opportunity to travel to Havana, Cuba for a spring break trip. I went with my graduate school and we were there for a little over a week. We attended lectures by professors from the University of Havana, went on site visits to numerous community projects around the city, and met many people that explained to us the nature of life in Havana. During my trip, I could not help but realize that there were two parts of town. There was Old Havana, and then there was the rest of the city. Whenever we went to Old Havana it was full of tourists, high-end restaurants, and boutique type shops. The people eating at these restaurants and buying items from these stores were not Cuban. The only Cubans I saw in this area were trying to sell items on the street to tourists to make their living. The other parts of Havana had buildings covered in graffiti and bars on windows. No one was ever out walking around and there barely any places to shop. This dichotomy made me think of the broken windows theory by James Q. Wilson. This theory states, “if a window is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” It means that if a neighborhood or a part of a city doesn’t clean up the graffiti or fix what is broken, the neighborhood will crumble down with it in regards to crime and violence. This theory applies to Old Havana and the other parts of the city because people take great care of Old Havana. They make a point to keep the locals out of this area and not be able to become consumers here. The rest of the city has more police standing guard. The feeling you get when you walk around there is that no one really cares if the area is kept up.

                                                                    OLD HAVANA                               

Image Credit: Mountainsoftravelphotos

                                                       OTHER PARTS OF THE CITY

Image Credit: Solsikken

           Havana is definitely not the only city where it is like this. Pretty much every large city in the world has an area of town that is more “run-down” and seems less safe. How do cities change this? Do they put more police in that area? Does the city use gentrification as a solving method? Does that really solve anything or does that just push the problem to another part of the city? There are so many questions and maybe there isn’t just one answer.

            An article, about broken windows theory, comments about how in New Jersey they thought a foot police patrol response was their way of solving crime and reducing these problems. So, five years after this started, an assessment was done to see if the foot patrol solved the issues in the area. The findings were very interesting. The assessment concluded that the foot patrol had not reduced crime, but it made the people in the area of the foot patrol feel safer. So the foot patrol did not technically help reduce crime rates, but if the people feel safe did they solve one part of the problem?

Image Credit: nicmyers
Juarez, Mexico

                     

A recent article in The Atlantic, talked about how the broken windows theory is relevant in a previously dangerous city in Mexico, Juarez. There have been a horrible number of murders in this city and there are many abandoned buildings and homes. Apparently, a new police chief was hired and started to change all of this. He started to place cops in various places around the city and have the citizens know there was now a police presence in the city. At first, there were a lot of problems between the gangs not wanting the police around. There were shoot-outs nightly and people dying daily. But, the police force kept going and rose above the problems. Now, people feel safe around their city. Almost 200 businesses have opened recently and people are moving back into the city.

           Juarez is one example of a city that needed the police around to stop crime and improve their way of life. People feel safer in this city now, so business are emerging and people are moving back again. Their broken windows are getting fixed. This could be because of a number of things, but it could be because of the role of the police in the city. To solve problems in certain cities, where people do not feel invested in their city and where crime escalates because of the lack of caring, there needs to be a number of factors working together to help solve the problems. Each city is different, but people are similar. They want to feel safe in their homes, and they need to see concrete proof that this is going to happen, or they move to another city and leave the broken windows behind. 

External Links:

Broken Windows Theory by James Q. Wilson- An article in The Atlantic about how broken windows theory is relevant to solving crime, or not, and the basis of this theory.

The "Broken Windows" Theory worked in Juarez- This is the article from The Atlantic I mentioned in my blog. It explains that increasing police presence has helped this Mexican city reduce crime and help their people feel safer. 

A sociological approach to the "Broken Windows" Theory and how each part of the theory affects the city as a whole.