The theory of broken windows as a crime strategy seemed on the surface to make sense…..by concentrating on little crimes, the result would be a decrease in major crimes. But did it make the problem worse?

In her recent book, Misdemeanorland, Yale Law School Professor Issa Kohler-Hausmann argues that, under “broken windows”, lower courts have slid into a mode of processing cases that prioritizes speed and efficiency over justice. She shows how the policing experiment has subjected hundreds of thousands of people to surveillance and asserts that the lower reaches of the criminal justice system operate as a form of social control.