UNIVERSITY OF TURKU

Faculty of Law

Criminology

KORANDER TIMO: Zero Tolerance of Broken Windows. Research on New York's neoconservative

model of crime prevention applied in Finland

Academic dissertation, 277 pages, 156 p. appendices (incl. 5 original publications)

November 2014

The present study is criminological research on control and crime prevention as well as police

research. The object of the study is the globally widespread uniformed police strategy called

zero tolerance. The strategy was tested in a uniformed police project, Tampere, Finland, for

during a period of 12 months at the turn of the millennium. Even though it was a new experiment,

our study shows that the operation mode in question has been and still is an essential

part of the traditional principles of the Finnish uniformed police.

The current article thesis includes five writings published in 1998-2005. The research questions

are the following: What are the main differences and similarities in the mechanisms,

contexts and effects of zero tolerance of the uniformed police actions both in the United States

and Finland? What kind of examples do the zero tolerance experiment in Tampere and the

zero tolerance of broken windows in New York give of evaluating crime prevention and moral

regulation?

The process and effect evaluation study of the Tampere experiment makes up the main empirical

data of this research. In order to collect the data, a survey was sent to 2,000 inhabitants of

Tampere at the beginning and end of the project. The crime statistics analysis included a victim

survey, police crime and emergency service statistics, statistics of summary penal orders

and fixed fine forms, the statistics of Statistics Finland and the project's own performance

forms. Tampere police officers were given surveys and theme interviews. Social, youth and

volunteer workers and youngsters were interviewed. As for the United States, the study leans

on a rather large amount of high quality and current criminological research.

From the perspective of moral regulation, the broken windows theory turns out to be an ideology

of neoconservatism and a moral project that guides cities to obtain a right to rigid security

control, which has earlier been restricted by the interpretation of the law favouring civil

rights. Both in New York and Tampere, there were several negative side and counter effects, a

fact which appears to be one central result in projects tightening up police control. The results

of the present study suggest that new research is necessary to determine whether all early intervention

projects targeted at children and young people are justified with regard to their

consequences.

Keywords: evaluation, crime prevention, criminal policy, criminology, control policy, multidimensional

evaluation, police, public order, youth