The Disorder of Threat
In March 1982, conservative theoreticians James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published a brief article in The Atlantic entitled “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety” that was to drastically alter the scope of policing. As opposed to previous ‘community policing’ stratagems in which police officers were encouraged to play an active if not collaborative role in building relationships with the community in their designated location, Wilson and Kelling advocated for the deployment of heightened police aggression—‘zero tolerance’—towards small-time offenders.
