The Museum of Broken Windows Makes a Powerful Plea for Police Reform

Before he was known as Donald Trump’s lawyer or “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani was one of New York City’s most divisive figures. In his tenure as mayor from 1994 to 2001, he framed his work as a mission to “clean up” New York, perhaps most controversially by waging a campaign against the city’s sky-high crime rates, which peaked in the 1970s and remained steady through the early ’90s.

At the center of this effort was the “broken windows” theory of criminology, which posits that visible signs of societal decay—graffiti, public lewdness, and broken windows on abandoned buildings—create an atmosphere that encourages crime. Stricter policing of these smaller offenses, according to the theory, would discourage people from committing more serious felonies.