Published by the National Crime Prevention Council:

December 01, 2009

It has been more than 27 years since Dr. George Kelling co-authored (with James Q. Wilson) the groundbreaking crime prevention article "Broken Windows" in The Atlantic Monthly.

Simply stated the “Broken Windows” theory of crime prevention says fix the small problems, don’t ignore them, and the big problems will take care of themselves. When the window of a school or other building is broken through vandalism, unless that window is repaired right away it will spawn more vandalism in a downward spiral that can impact whole communities. This theory is often behind the so-called “zero tolerance” of petty crimes and “quality-of-life” crackdowns by political and law enforcement leaders in communities large and small.