Kelling, George, and James Wilson. "Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety". The Atlantic, March 1982.

Kelling, George, and James Wilson. "Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety". The Atlantic, March 1982.

• In the mid-1970s, the state of New Jersey funded a program for local law enforcement to make active foot patrols of neighborhoods on the premise that it would reduce crime and improve community environments. Many were skeptical of its effectiveness, since foot patrols reduced police mobility and removed them from direct communication with superiors, but the local law enforcement complied because the state was footing the bill.
• Five years after the program was introduced, the Police Foundation in Washington D.C. announced that their study of the foot patrols in Newark revealed no effect on rates of crime. Residents in areas where foot patrols occurred, however, reported feeling significantly safer and more trusting of police, and police officers on the beat reported having more positive impressions of the communities there are patrolling.
• The primary effect of foot patrols by police officers was an increased in the perceived 'orderliness' of patrolled areas and the positive relations between police and residents. While actual crime rates were unaffected, other forms of social disorder below the criminal threshold were reduced and controlled by the presence of police officers.
• Evidence from Newark suggests that the positive community relations effects of foot patrol cross racial divides, with White police officers managed to develop positive relationships with residents of majority-Black neighborhoods in Newark.
• There is a definite sociological relationship between crime and disorder. While the relationship is not strictly causal, the breakdown of social order signals to residents of an area that infractions are not punished and few consequences exist for their actions. This general acceptance of disorderly behavior can develop into criminal acts, based on a societal feeling that these more serious transgressions will also go unpunished.
• Social experiments by Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University, with abandoned cars suggest that patterns of collective behavior in a community shape how readily people in that community will commit crimes. A history of crimes or non-criminal anti-social behavior will make people more likely to engage in criminal behavior. 
• "That link is similar to the process whereby one broken window becomes many. The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization—namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. 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. If the 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".
• The lack of rising crime in neighborhood with rising rates of disorderly behavior may simply reflect a change in resident behavior to take more precautions in response to the perception of an increasingly dangerous environment. This is supported by low rates of victimization of the elderly, who are more vulnerable, but less likely to be victims because they are far more cautious than other citizens. 
• High rates of disorderly behavior in a neighborhood also contributes to a decrease in trust between police and residents. Residents blame the police for not upholding the social order and allowing fear to proliferate, while strange police entering disorderly areas may blame the residents for the conditions and be unsympathetic to their victimization by crime.
• Urban decay since the 1950s has been particularly troubling regarding crime rates for a number of reasons. Increased mobility has meant that most residents can move if a neighborhood becomes disorderly, meaning the population which usually upholds the social order can simply disappear. Police now also have more procedures to prevent the discretionary brutality which was formerly used to uphold social order.
• By the 1960s, the police had also finished a century-long transformation from a force for maintaining societal order, especially against race rioters, to a crime-fighting force focusing on collecting evidence and making arrests. This has reduced the focus of the police on community relations and non-criminal, but still harmful, behaviors.
• The legacies of the older style of policing are still present in some communities, especially through the existence of changes of 'suspicious persons' or 'vagrancy', crimes with no legal meaning, but which empower police to enforce a vague social order. 
• While theoretically an officer in a patrol car can engage in community policing as effectively as a beat cop, the car creates a powerful barrier separating the police officer from the general populace. It affects and limits the interactions which police officers can engage in, often in ways which prevent positive engagement with the community, reducing respect for officers and discouraging citizens from offering tips. 
• The authors agree with concerns that laws prohibiting vagrancy or public drunkenness are unjust to individuals on the basis that the government should not be regulated these behaviors, but that these laws constitute the last tools of police to enforce social order and that without them, police will not be able to curb the disorderly behavior which eventually leads to crime.
• The role of police in enforcing societal order is controversial and conflicts with expectations that police behavior be regulated and limited to enforcing court-based laws. Residents of areas often want police to beat-up gang members even if they have not committed crimes, seeing the police as a more trustworthy gang with similar abilities to dispense violence.
• Two non-police alternatives to enforcing social order exist: watchmen and vigilantes. Watchmen are unarmed civilians whose presence discourages crime, the most famous contemporary example being the Guardian Angels in New York City. Vigilantes, who use violence to maintain order, have largely disappeared from America.
• Lack of community organization, probably caused by the dispersed responsibility among so many respectable residents, means that police are often needed, however; citizens cannot on their own impose social order.
• Since police resources are limited, and undergoing further cuts, neighborhoods which are just starting to experience disorder should be targeted. Some neighborhoods are well-ordered and do not need foot patrols, while others are so far-gone as to make foot patrols futile; ones in the middle should be targeted so that respectable residents remain in control.