Breaking Window Policing - The New Theory

In 19 82, wilson and kelling published an article in the atlantic that became the foundation of what we now know as broken windows policing. Their chief argument was boiled down in this sentence: if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. So in order to keep crime down and keep neighborhoods nice, they argued, all violations of public order have to be sternly punished and prosecuted. There was only one piece of hard evidence behind their theory, and they didn't interpret it the way they sought the actual researchers who did the study interpreted it.