Post-Riot London

In the wake of the worst week of civil disobedience seen in Britain for generations, we looked for inspirational leadership and sound responses to heal social rifts and help prevent them from being reopened. Instead we got naive and unsubstantiated theories of criminal behavior and hard-line policing measures that will fail to address the root causes of the malaise and may even make matters worse.
In a recent article, the Evening Standard celebrated with great enthusiasm the coming of William Bratton — celebrated U.S. “super-cop” — to advise on London’s policing of youth delinquency and urban violence. For his tough stance on petty crime (politically popular right now), his advocacy for “quality of life” policing (a euphemism for cracking down on anyone deemed unpleasant in public spaces) and his seemingly impressive ability to change fortunes on a shoe string (economically appealing), it is not difficult to see why Cameron would look to Bratton now. Gangs, it is hoped, will be on the run when Bratton comes to town.
For Cameron this represents yet another political volte-face. Claims that he would avoid promoting headline-grabbing initiatives now ring hollow as he waxes hyperbolically about an “all-out war” on gangs. But even more worrying than his protean politics is the uncritical response he has opted for in soliciting Bratton’s consul — the neoliberal doxa of “broken windows” theory and policing.
In its original criminological guise, the broken windows theory holds that large-scale crime is causally linked to small-scale crime: If you live in a community where windows are broken, walls are covered in graffiti and pick-pocketing is commonplace, you are consequently more likely to see a proliferation of more serious crime involving narcotics, organized gangs and the like. This fits very neatly into Cameron’s notion of a Broken Britain; if we let people get away with small misdemeanors — bad language, let’s say — then they will assume they can get away with much more, and in time they will harden into the “feral creatures” that rioted in Clapham, Chalk Farm and Hackney. It’s a social disease that needs to be nipped in the bud.
The first issue with this theory is that it is very poorly evidenced. It sounds plausible, but empirically it does not stack up. No major studies have robustly proven its validity, and even common-sense reasoning suggests that it makes some questionable causal leaps. Many young people swear, smoke pot and even steal — far fewer go on to become violent criminals.
This is not to say that the environmental dilapidation symbolized in the broken windows metaphor is not problematic for neighborhood vitality. To be sure, this can lead to downward spirals in which trust, pride and hope understandably wane. But it is important not to confuse correlation with causality. Broken windows are a manifestation of neighborhood degeneration — which may admittedly feedback to contribute to further decline — but they cannot reasonably be called its source, and they cannot be causally linked to escalating criminality.
A second, related issue with this reading of the broken windows theory is that it tends to encourage a seemingly logical but fallacious response, fraught with ethical and practical difficulties: zero-tolerance policing.