Broken Windows Increase Violence

Zach Patton on Governing.com:

Since the late 1980s, cities have bought heavily into the "broken windows" theory: the notion that an unkempt, disorderly environment breeds crime. Leaders in New York City were the first to act on the idea on a broad scale. After an aggressive campaign to clean up graffiti in the city's subway system, petty crime went down. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- along with Police Chief Bill Bratton -- used the broken windows idea in their "zero tolerance" approach to cleaning up the city in the early 1990s.

Since then, cities all over the country have jumped on the broken windows bandwagon. The theory, though, remains controversial: It's been difficult to separate the effects of cleaning up a building from a host of other factors that may also contribute to crime in a particular area...

Click here to read about the Dutch experiment that sets to prove this theory scientifically.