On Monday, November 26, 2012, Deputy Commissioner for New York City Police Department, Paul Browne, clocked out of work on a day that left many officials confused: not a single violent crime was reported in the city. [1]

No shootings. No stabbings. Nothing.

Of course, this was a far cry from the 1990s: in 1994, for example, 4,967 people were shot—almost 14 a day.

What changed? How did New York City become one of the safest cities in America and more importantly, what can we learn from it?

If we can change bad behaviors on a societal level, how might we change them on an individual level as well?

To answer those questions, we need to go back two decades . . .

The Curious Case of Crack Cocaine

In the 1990s, crime declined in the United States. There were a number of reasons for this. The crack epidemic tipped down, the economy tipped up and people sought employment instead of crime, and the population got older (elderly people tend to abide by the law.)

In New York City, however, another story unfolded. The economy was in dire straits and welfare cuts meant citizens from neighborhoods struggled to earn a living.

The above average number of immigrants arriving in the city meant the population wasn’t aging – it was getting younger.

And although the crack cocaine epidemic tipped down like it had done in neighboring cities, it had been gradually declining before the crime dip.

What was going on?

Broken Windows Fallacy

In 1982, social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling theorized crime is a result of urban disorder—and Broken Window theory was born.

In his bestselling book: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell explains:

If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from building to the street on which is faces, sending a signal that anything goes. [2]

In a city like New York, broken windows became invitations for further law breaking like burglary, rape, and murder.

If law enforcement was going to clean up its city, it had to start from the bottom.

Do You Have Broken Windows?

Bad habits are like a crime epidemics: they’re contagious.

If your friends drink irresponsibly, it’s likely you do as well. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, wrote Jim Rohn.

But, even if your peers don’t influence you, bad behaviors like drinking irresponsibly, eating unhealthily and thinking negatively, can begin when we permit ourselves to do imperceptibly bad habits—once.

These are our Broken Windows and when left unrepaired in our environment, they can become invitations to misbehave again in the future and perhaps more severely.

As we learned when we looked at Choice Architecture, if our environment is designed in a way where positive habits are accessible and negative habits are inaccessible, we’re more likely to commit to the behaviors we really want.

Gladwell writes:

The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behaviour is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment.

The Broken Windows in New York weren’t all literally broken windows – although, vandalism did play a part of the problem – it was more of a metaphor.

The real broken windows – those moments of critical mass that caused the epidemic in the first place – were not a result of felonies like kidnapping, arson or robbery as one would expect: they were a result of misdemeanors like graffiti and fare beating.

These were crimes police officers had previously overlooked as insignificant but the question was: If graffiti and fare-beating became the focus of the cleanup, would the crime rate tip down?

The Clean Up

In the 1980s, George Kelling was hired by the New York Transit Authority as a consultant and immediately put the Broken Windows theory into practice.

A new subway director was employed to mange a multi-billion dollar rebuilding of the New York City subway system as well. That man was David Gunn and he had one focus: clean up the subway graffiti.

His decision was met with disapproval from his colleagues, but Gunn insisted:

The graffiti was symbolic of the collapse of the system. When you looked at the process of rebuilding the organisation and morale, you had to win the battle against graffiti. Without winning that battle, all the management reforms and physical changes just weren’t going to happen. [3]

In 1990, after six years of cleaning, the subway was finished. But there was one problem left to solve: fare-beating.

Fare-beaters often went unpunished because police offers had more important crimes to fight. When $1.25 was lost, it wasn’t a big deal, but when everyone did it, then it became a problem.

When a couple lawbreakers jumped the toll, it became an invitation for others to follow—including citizens who normally abide by the law.

The consensus was: “If they don’t pay, why should I?”

At this time, law enforcement officer William Bratton was called in to head the transit police. Bratton, like Gunn, believed if a Broken Window like fare-beating was addressed, the crime rate could tip down.

Bratton instructed police officers to dress in civilian clothing and arrest fare-beaters to make an example of them. This was to demonstrate to others: “If you’re thinking about toll jumping, here’s what’s going to happen to you”.

Here’s where it gets interesting: One in seven perps arrested had an outstanding warrant for a previous crime—and one in twenty was carrying an illegal firearm.

Within months of Bratton in office, arrests tripled. New York City’s crime rate plummeted.

Identifying Your Broken Windows

No one is perfect; we all have Broken Windows we either choose to ignore or argue are irreparable. These are behaviors we believe are insignificant, but in reality, are invitations for other, similar negative behaviors.

If we forgo going to the gym in favor of watching television and rationalize it’s a “one-off”, not only are we likely to repeat this behavior again in the future, we’re likely to permit other bad behaviors like eating sugary food as well.

But, if, like Bratton and Gunn, we repair our Broken Windows, much like identifying our Tipping Point, we can begin to disengage with other bad habits that may be problematic in the future.

If, when you think negatively about yourself, you binge eat in front of the television, don’t. Learn how to love yourself and prevent the accompanying behaviours.

Can’t motivate yourself to go running in the morning? Maybe you don’t need the motivation to wake up earlier: maybe you need to learn how to go to bed on time.

Don’t be a bystander. Intervene. Identify your Broken Windows and repair it early before it becomes a problem later.

Look for that one bad habit that causes you to think: “Ah, what the hell”. Don’t let it interfere with the hard work you have planned this year.

You got this.

Conclusion

When Broken Windows are left unrepaired, we invite ourselves to let other negative behaviours become permissible. But when we identify and repair them by replacing them better routines that actually stick, our behaviours tip down and for the better.

That Tipping Point can begin now.