McGregor
Noah McGregor
Arthur Kayzakian
English 091
19 October 2018
The Fragile Mind
Malcolm Gladwell’s, The Tipping Point, is an engaging read that won bestseller and includes the study of the human mind and how the environment can affect it. Malcolm Gladwell is a canadian journalist/author who talks about how the little things can make a big difference. Throughout the book Gladwell talks about the power of context and his five theories. His theories include, The Broken Windows Theory, The Tipping Point, Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), The Law of The Few, and The Stickiness Factor. Throughout the book, Gladwell makes a unique argument that there is alot that goes on in a human's heads and environment that causes them to do certain actions.
The Broken Windows Theory is an image of impunity. On the off chance that one window in a building is shattered and no one will fix it, it is likely that whatever is left of the windows will be shattered as well. Gladwell states, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, they write, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes.” The thought is that individuals, particularly potential culprits, take prompts from their environment and adjust their conduct depending on what they see around them. In the event that a city square is free of trash/litter and its structures are all around kept up, individuals will be more averse to litter or vandalize there, on the grounds that they expect to be held to a higher standard. Some believe that the broken windows theory is faulty and does not work anymore. Rachel Nuwer, from Smart News claims:
The broken window theory doesn’t really apply that well to reality. New research shows that New York City’s historic decline in crime rates during the 1990s cannot be attributed to CompState, the NYC police department’s dynamic approach to crime, introduced in 1994, that included carrying out operations in accordance with the broken window theory. The crime decline has nothing to do with enhanced enforcement of misdemeanors, the research published in Justice Quarterly by New York University professor David Greenberg reports, nor is there any link between arrests in misdemeanors and drops in felony charges, including robberies, homicides and assaults.
In her article, Nuwer argues that crime and violence did not decline due to the way that the NYPD approached crime under the Broken Windows Theory, but it declined all over and all areas of New York saw the same levels of crime. However, authors Harcourt and Bernard E. state, “ New York City's new policing strategy has met with overwhelming support in the press and am...
