Feng Shui Law and Order

Reprinted from THE WEEK, December 12, 2008

If a neighborhood is kept clean and orderly, its inhabitants will erspect one another’s property and the law. But if the streets are full of graffiti, litter, and vandalized stores and buildings, residents become contemptuous of social norms and crime will rise.

So goes the “broken windows” theory, a controversial notion of law and order taught in police academies, and sometimes cited as a drving force behind the reduction of crime in New York City in the 1990’s.  Now. a Dutch study is proving that the concept is truer than most social scientists had believed. Behavioral Scientist Kees Keizer tested the borken windows theory in a half-dozen kinds of public places, and foudn that had a major effect on people’s behavior in every one. If a sidewalk is kept clean, for example, only 33 percent of people will toss an unwatned flier onto the ground; if there’s lots of trash and litter, 69 percent will choose to add to it. Just 13 percent of passers-by will steal money from an envelope sticking out of a clean mailbox, but 27 percent will steal if the box in covered in graffiti. “It is quite shocking that the mere presence of litter resulted in a doubling of the number of people stealing,” Keizer tells the Los Angeles Times.