Fixing ‘Broken Windows’ Policing to Make It Work for Latin America

Michael Jenkins (@MichaelJJenkins) and I have a brief look at the applicability of broken windows policing to Latin America as private and public sectors groups in El Salvador and Guatemala currently consider implementing their own versions of the model to deal with high levels of crime.

Here's a tease of Fixing ‘Broken Windows’ Policing to Make It Work for Latin America which you can find in today's World Politics Review. (Click here if having trouble with the original link.)

Giuliani, and even more so Bratton, are known for their application of the “broken windows” model of policing that many credit with helping to reduce crime across much of the United States over the past 20 years. If done properly and in combination with other reforms—such as purging corrupt police officers and members of the judiciary and adopting management models of accountability like CompStat, the computerized system developed in New York to track crime and officers’ beats—the broken windows model of policing can contribute to improving the security situation in Latin America.

Mike Jenkins, my co-author on this briefing, is assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Scranton and co-author of a book on urban policing titled Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era.