"Some of the best new ideas in preventing violence borrow heavily from the principles of epidemic theory. Take, for example, the so-called "broken window" hypothesis that has been used around the country as the justification for cracking down on "quality of life" crimes like public urination and drinking. In a famous experiment conducted twenty-seven years ago by the Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a car was parked on a street in Palo Alto, where it sat untouched for a week. At the same time, Zimbardo had an identical car parked in a roughly comparable neighborhood in the Bronx, only in this case the license plates were removed and the hood was propped open. Within a day, it was stripped. Then, in a final twist, Zimbardo smashed one of the Palo Alto car's windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours, that car, too, was destroyed. Zimbardo's point was that disorder invites even more disorder-that a small deviation from the norm can set into motion a cascade of vandalism and criminality. The broken window was the tipping point.

The broken-window hypothesis was the inspiration for the cleanup of the subway system conducted by the New York City Transit Authority in the late eighties and early nineties. Why was the Transit Authority so intent on removing graffiti from every car and cracking down on the people who leaped over turnstiles without paying? Because those two "trivial" problems were thought to be tipping points-broken windows-that invited far more serious crimes. It is worth noting that not only did this strategy seem to work-since 1990, felonies have fallen more than fifty per cent-but one of its architects was the then chief of the Transit Police, William Bratton, who was later to take his ideas about preventing crime to the city as a whole when he became head of the New York Police Department."

From Gladwell dot com

Very nice. i like # 1. ????? · 2009-06-20: 09:37

interesting work Nellinka !!! finbarr · 2009-06-20: 19:46

Very interesting! I think another theory to take from these pictures is "The higher the window, the harder to chuck a rock through it" :) Great pictures. dontblink · 2009-06-21: 12:52

Great capture of shatered windows, too bad people have to do that. but still creative shot mystic1 · 2009-06-22: 20:16

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