If painting things over walls leads to crime, what does drawing things by cleaning walls lead to?

In 1996, US scholars Kelling and Cole published a book that explored the relation between low-level disorder (‘broken windows’) and crime, concluding that not fixing small problems led to higher levels of anti-social behaviour, crime and ‘respectable’ neighbours leaving a particular area. Since then, the ‘Broken Windows Theory’ has been used all over the world to justify the criminalization of and clampdown on activities that are seen as the early signs of disorder and vandalism, such as graffiti.

If all the literature produced in the last few years problematizing the simplifying link of causality established by Kelling and Coles between disorder and crime hasn’t yet convinced us all that the feelings of insecurity and our growing difficulties to relate to our neighbourhoods and to one another are a problem that is complex and won’t go away by fining street artists, maybe ‘reverse graffiti‘ will make some think!