In 1982 we argued that police departments should return to their ancient tradition of maintaining public order as well as fighting serious crime. The urban American public was upset by signs of disorder such as graffiti, public drunks, aggressive panhandlers, street-corner drug dealers and hostile gangs of youth. When the police were first formed in American cities they took such matters seriously, but as other agencies developed that supposedly were interested in human distress, and with the rise in serious crime rates, the police increasingly confined themselves to investigating offenses.

We also suggested another possibility: that high levels of public disorder could indirectly increase crime rates. This would happen as disorder discouraged honest people from using the streets, thereby leaving public spaces available for small-scale offenses and then more serious ones. We used the metaphor of a building with a broken window: If it were not promptly fixed, more windows would be broken. And so if public disorder were not eliminated, more disorder and then more serious crime would become commonplace. Unfortunately, we did not label this argument a speculation.

Nearly a quarter century has elapsed since we published “Broken Windows” in the Atlantic Monthly. During that time many big-city police departments have become concerned about public order, even while some critics have argued that increased public order does not lead to less crime. We believe that when the police work to restore order and do so in a decent and lawful fashion, they have produced an important public good. We doubt it is necessary to justify that result; it is, we think, self-evidently good.