Good Afternoon Friends, to whom I send you this reflection.
In 1969, at the University of Stamford, Prof. Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment of social psychology. He left two cars abandoned in the street, two identical cars, the same make, model and color. One left him in the Bronx, then a poor and troubled area of New York and the other in Palo Alto, an area rich and quiet area of California. Two identical cars abandoned, two neighborhoods with very different populations and a team of specialists in social psychology by studying the behavior of the people in each site.
It turned out that the abandoned car in the Bronx began to be vandalism in a few hours. Lost the tires, engine, mirrors, radio, etc. All the profitable took him, and what is not destroyed. On the other hand the abandoned car in Palo Alto remained intact.
It is common to be attributed to poverty the causes of crime. Attribution in the more conservative ideological positions, (right and left). However, the experiment in question did not end there, when the abandoned car in the Bronx was already undone and the Palo Alto had a week impeccable.
The researchers decided to break a glass of the car in Palo Alto, California. The result was that unleashed the same process as in the Bronx of New York and the theft, violence and vandalism reduced the vehicle to the same condition of the poor neighborhood.
Why the broken glass in the abandoned car in a supposedly secure neighborhood is able to shoot a criminal process?
It is not a question of poverty. Obviously, it is something that has to do with psychology, human behavior and the social relations.
A broken glass in an abandoned car conveys an idea of deterioration, of selflessness, of carelessness that is breaking codes of coexistence, such as absence of law, standards, rules, that everything is worth nothing. Each new attack the auto reaffirms and multiply that idea, until the escalation of acts, each time worse, becomes overwhelming, resulting in an irrational violence.
In later experiments (James Q. Wilson and George Kelling) developed the 'theory of the broken windows', which from a criminological point of view, concludes that the offense is greater in the areas where the neglect, dirt, disorder and abuse are higher.
If you break a glass of a window of a building and repairs, will soon be broken all the others. If a community is exhibiting signs of deterioration, and this is something that seems to not care about anyone, then there will be the crime. If they are committed 'these small faults' how to park in a forbidden place, exceeding the speed limit or running a red light and these small faults are not punished, then they will begin to develop major failures and then increasingly serious crimes.
If the parks and other public spaces are deteriorated progressively and no one takes action, these places will be abandoned by the majority of the people (that is no longer leave their homes for fear of gangs), those same spaces abandoned by the people will be progressively occupied by criminals.
The response of the scholars it was stronger still, indicating that; before the neglect and disorder grow many social ills and degenerates into the environment.
Only you can see an example in house, if a parent leaves your home has some malfunctions, such as lack of painting the walls in poor condition, bad habits, bad habits, bad words, lack of respect among the members of the family nucleus, etc., etc., etc., then little by little you will fall into a neglect of the interpersonal relations of the family and begin to create bad relations with society in general, and maybe one day they will fall in prison.
This may be a hypothesis of the decomposition of society, the lack of attachment to the universal values, the lack of respect for the partnership between if, and to the authorities (extortion and bribery) and vice versa, corruption at all levels, lack of education and training of urban culture, lack of opportunities has generated a country with broken windows, with lots of windows broken and no one seems to be willing to repair them.
The solution to this problem I DON'T HAVE IT DEAR READER