Broken Police Patrolling
This weeks chapter build on what was discussed in last weeks chapter, but instead of targeting vulnerable communities with untruthful marketing, these communities were the target of high police presence and subsequently numerous nuanced criminal arrests. The chapter focuses around the PredPol program which is a mathematical model that helps police departments determine where they should have police officers patrol. Theoretically if you have police officers patrolling the areas where crime is predicted to happen, then there will be less crime. As described in the chapter, this just lead to more criminally arrested for petty crimes that could be classified as non violent.
The theory behind the model is the “Broken Window” theory developed by George Kelling and James Q Wilson. Kelling was a criminologist and Wilson was a public policy expert. Their theory’s solution was for society to resist the spread of disorder. In this idea, the goal was to arrest lower non-violent criminals to help encourage law-abiding citizens to stay in the community. A lot of police department interpreted this as the need to do more “Stop and Frisk” tactics in the communities. The “Stop and Frisk” tactic has been researched and proven to be inherently racist. Because of this, a cyclical feedback loop was created. First police would patrol poorer neighborhood at more risk to crime by the prediction of the PrePol program. Then they would “Stop and Frisk” suspicion looking citizens in these poorer areas. Because of this they would make larger numbers of zero tolerant nonviolent arrests, that if the police presence was more limited. Lastly, these citizens would be sentenced to more jail time because they are from a highly criminally active area and then relocated back into the same community once the jail time was served to have the cycle repeat itself.
The true intention of the “Broken Window” theory is to maintain order in the community; not to inflict the standardized police order, but that specific communities order. That is to not let the community descend into more chaos. I am a supporter of this theory, because puts the responsibility on the members of the community to decide what their definition of acceptable actions for their community. It shifts the majority of the responsibility away from bureaucrats in the police department making policy and onto the community members. In my opinion, that is how communities are supposed to function. The police then become a system check that uphold that communities standards instead of enforcing their own.
