CriticIncivilities reduction policing, zero tolerance, and the retreat from coproduction: weak foundations and strong pressures

Abstract

A 2002 New Yorker cartoon depicts two grizzled prisoners whiling away the day on their bunks. The one on the bottom bunk, presumably in reply to a question from the inmate in the top bunk, explains, “There might have been some carelessness on my part, but it was mostly just good police work.” The inmate on the top bunk seems startled by the admission. The question to consider here is whether broken windows or incivility reduction policing is good police work. Broken windows policing is conceptually grounded on the incivilities thesis. The incivilities thesis, although it comes in several different guises, suggests that: physical deterioration and disorderly social conduct each contribute independently to fear, neighborhood decline, and crime; by implication, incivility reducing initiatives will contribute to neighborhood stability and safety, and lower fear. To the extent that this logic model is inaccurate, inadequate, or potentially misleading, incivilities reduction as a set of policing strategies may fail to deliver. This chapter will summarize the conceptual limitations of that thesis, and the empirical limitations of the supporting work. It will then broaden the discussion context in two ways: first, to provide an alternate historical outline of where broken windows policing came from and, second, to outline the elements of a police–citizen coproduced process of public safety. Given that context, it sketches the specific challenges facing successful coproduction over time in an urban residential context. Some current practices justified on the basis of the incivilities thesis, such as zero tolerance policing, are probably exacerbating the very problems earlier versions of these policing strategies sought to alleviate.