Broken Windows Skepticism

I was very intrigued by the “Broken Windows” and Gonorrhea reading for this week. Before moving to NYC, I worked in Philadelphia as a high school math teacher for a few years. Philadelphia has a huge problem with gonorrhea: in 2000, over 3% of all adolescent women ages 15-19 were infected with gonorrhea. Gonorrhea and Chlamydia were such big issues that in 2003, the city began screening programs in all public high schools. If the broken windows theory is applied to Philadelphia, then it would seem that a majority of the neighborhoods would have to be physically deteriorated for there to be such a high rate of gonorrhea. I find this pretty hard to believe.

The neighborhood where I taught would definitely have scored poorly on the “broken windows” index. And even though many of my students lived relatively close to school, they took great pride in their neighborhoods acting as junior block captains and just getting involved; essentially doing things that would make their neighborhoods score well on the index. So there seems to be a disconnect between where they live and where they spend most of their time. I wonder how the “broken windows” and gonorrhea connection would then apply.

I also understand that this connection is trying to stray from the individual level and move to the neighborhood level. Yet sometimes I feel that people get so carried away with making an impact at the population level that they actually forget about the individuals that are affected (i.e. my former students).