Tag Archives: Broken Windows Theory

I found the discussion in class yesterday about graffiti and its relation to the “Broken Windows Theory” interesting, so I decided to do some research on the topic. I found an extremely interesting article from The New York Times called “A Sociologist’s Look at Graffiti” by Sewell Chan.

George Snyder, a Baruch Sociologist basically acts as a cultural anthropologist and does some ethnography on graffiti writers, hanging out with them, getting to know them and understand them. Snyder believes “graffiti writers are a subculture that use their own experiences to build legitimate careers and are not practitioners of vandalism and social disorder”.

However, Rudolph Giuliani and police commissioner, Raymond Kelly would disagree with Snyder. Giuliani had embraced the idea of the “Broken Windows Theory” and created the “Quality of Life” campaign in order to try and gain urban stability in the 1990’s. The “Quality of Life” was designed to threaten and bully people with massive police force. Giuliani and Kelly sought to fight petty crimes and issue things like “C summonses” which we have seen still occurs today from “The NYPD Tapes”. Graffiti was a sign of disorder to Giuliani and the police force that must be dealt with and controlled.

However, Snyder points out that “unlike other “Quality of Life” crimes, graffiti does not tend to be focused in poor neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime”. He explains that graffiti writers want to write in places that will be seen like in the Lower East Side and SoHo. He says that these are the places that have the most graffiti and they are not poor areas with a lot of crime.

Snyder met with graffiti writer, Espo in 1996 who created a billboard in Williamsburg, Brooklyn aimed at Giuliani which reads, “Greetings from EspoLand, Where the Quality of Life is Offensive”.

Espo whose real name is Stephen Powers, became well known and store owners would ask him to paint their store fronts. He also worked with The New York Times and eventually was arrested by the Giuliani administration for previous illegal writings.  I also found a short documentary of Espo and other writers, and Espo states that he painted commercial gates and he considered it to be “an active public service”. I found that interesting because he did honestly make the gates look better and store owners did eventually recognize that.

Synder says, “In its purest form graffiti is a democratic art form that revels in the American Dream”. I agree with this statement because graffiti is truly freedom of one’s expression and is not regulated by the government or corporate. I believe this is why Giuliani and many others despise graffiti because it scares them and they don’t want radical ideas floating around into the masses head or they simply just cant recognize and enjoy the natural beauty of an urban art. I believe graffiti artists are extremely talented, genuine and sincere and I believe most of these drawings and paintings scream the truth about politics and freedom in America.

If interested in graffiti and art in general, I recommend watching these two documentaries: “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop”.