The Fall From Eden: Breaking the First Window and the Construction of a Criminogenic Origin Myth

• In Event: Critical Police Studies: An Invitation

Abstract

Contemporary policing strategies incorporate to a large degree the disorder policing concepts of Wilson and Kelling’s broken windows theory, from aggressive stop-and-frisk policies to “softer” community policing efforts. Wilson and Kelling’s theory revolves around disorder as a causal mechanism for serious crime and a larger explanation for “crime-ridden communities.” In so doing, these authors sketch a theory of community, police, and neighborhood change that has proven widely influential despite, or perhaps because of, its dissemination through non-academic channels. In this presentation, we examine the assumptions made by the authors, addressing an understanding of community as White and middle-class, of policing as evolving in touch with popular will (with Moore), and of disorder as representing Black and Brown desegregation. We argue that Wilson and Kelling (and Moore) have created a myth to explain the origin of “crime-ridden communities,” whereby fictive homeostatic White communities are invaded by disordered Black and Brown criminals. This origin myth has proven powerful due to its timing and its deft legitimation of White flight, police aggression toward minorities, and neoliberal social policy that devastated urban labor markets beginning in the 1970s. In sum, the myth of disorder has served not only as a discursive backdrop, but has also covered for law enforcement in their management of these urban policy shifts.

Authors

• Aaron Roussell, Washington State University

• Jason Chester Dunbar, Washington State University - Pullman