Integrated care cannot flourish with broken windows

The theory of the broken windows can explain much of the low incidence of integrated care. This theory of the criminologists (Kelling and Coles w3x) states that the incidence of crime depends more on the context than on personal characteristics of the criminal such as sex, age, race, education and cultural background. The theory got its name from the metaphor of a house with one broken window. When this window is not repaired, soon a second window will be broken. Then ordinary citizens become criminals by stealing everything valuable from the house. Basing their policy on this theory, the New York Police and New York Transit Authority lowered the incidence of serious crimes from 626,182 in 1992 to 355,893 in 1997 w4x. The new approach started in the subway and after its success it was expanded to the whole of New York. Each subway train was immediately repaired and repainted. Graffiti were removed during the night after discovery. Simultaneously, a zero tolerance policy was introduced with severe penalties for passengers who continued to demolish the trains. As a result, most of the passengers started to behave as good citizens. Total crime diminished, as the above mentioned figures indicate.