A place that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.

A story about a series of experiments on The Broken Windows Theory. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis on Nov 22, 2008 - 23 comments

Despite a sharp national decline in crime, American criminal justice has become crueler and less caring than it has been at any other time in our modern history. Why? Former conservative economist Glenn C. Loury on incarceration in America. [via]
posted by Sonny Jim on Jul 20, 2007 - 64 comments

Unexplained death in a nutshell. In the 1930’s International Harvester heiress Frances Glessner Lee built one-inch-to-one foot scale models of violent crimes.
posted by arse_hat on Jan 26, 2005 - 15 comments

The return of the dangerous classes: crime control in the 21st century. "The language of crime control seems to be today on the verge of eclipsing all others - in particular that of social rights – and becoming the single, all encompassing goal of social policy."
Sounds topical? John Lea's work on the changes postfordism has brought to crime control are even more relevant now than they were when he wrote them back in the nineties. [more]
posted by slipperywhenwet on Apr 30, 2003 - 3 comments