ABSTRACT
This chapter interprets the political and aesthetic economy of “broken windows” policing as a central feature of neoliberal urban governance in the United States. The expression “broken windows” refers to the imposition of severe punishments, including prison sentences, for minor infractions like vandalism, on the theory that these are likely precursors to more serious crimes, a policy that has contributed to the vastly disproportionate incarceration of people of color and, in particular, to police violence directed at young Black men and women. The chapter explains the source of this discursive practice in neoliberal economic theory that reconceives the potential criminal as an entrepreneur and seeks to deter crime by raising its “cost.” These reflections were originally prompted by the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives (Black Lives Matter) in response to the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. This revised version resituates the text in relation to the nationwide (and worldwide) protests that arose during the summer of 2020 in response to the police killing of another unarmed Black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An update on the recent history of “broken windows” discourse also shows how legal theory has drawn on certain architectural theories to propose architecture and urbanism as related forms of “crime control.”
