The Tribune

By KIRKLAND PRATT

Armed with a camera and access to social media, local community advocate Deran Thompson has made a name for himself with the focus he brought to the nastiness with which we cohabit here on New Providence. Vivid pictorials tell the tale of a people who have lost sight of sanitation, pride and concern for individual health. Overrun canisters, rotting slop and discarded food at the world famous Arawak Cay Fish Fry (just a few steps away from oblivious diners) and waste receptacles neighbouring government buildings and schools filled to capacity and overflowing into public space, has become the buzz on the local blogosphere. Each new photo posted by Thompson reveals just how filthy New Providence has become.

Have we dropped the ball? Has the island’s environment become nastier between governing administrations? Does the average Bahamian citizen care enough about his environs? Has our sense of national-pride been confined to the perimeters of our own back yards? And is there in fact a psychological explanation for littering, garbage and tolerance of the same?

Between our chain of islands, there exists varying levels of interest in environmental awareness especially as it relates to garbage control and disposal. Some islands are much cleaner than others, any non-expert may observe this. To examine more closely, even in the communities which are considered upscale, there are pockets of garbage. This says then that poverty is not in fact linked to crime or untidiness.

In 1969, a social psychology experiment carried out by Stanford University School of Behavioural/Social Science researches sought to explain the cause of anecdotal behaviours between dissimilar socioeconomic groups. The research team conducted a field trial in which two identical cars (of the same model and same colour) were left on different streets. One car was left in the New York suburb of the Bronx, a deprived area, and the other car was left on a wealthy Californian neighbourhood street. Within a few hours of being left, the abandoned car in New York was completely stripped of tires, mirrors, and speakers and all useful contents were extracted and the remains destroyed. The car abandoned in California, however, remained intact.

Local social observers and misguided politicians frequently cite poverty as the cause of crime, but the 1969 Stanford University experiment disproves this position. Minimally, it opens the issue of crime under a new consideration. The Stanford experiment did not end there: after the car abandoned in the Bronx had been stripped and demolished, and the one in California had remained intact for a week, the researchers broke the glass window on the car of the latter. The car in California then became vandalized, much as the car in the Bronx had become reduced to the theft and violence in the slums.

What about the broken car glass triggered this ordinarily civil and upscale neighbourhood to turn on the car that it once preserved for an entire week, so much so to trigger a similar criminal action? It is not poverty now is it? It has obviously more to do with behavioural psychology and social psychology.

When the visual of an intact glass was changed to that of a broken glass, a sense of deterioration originated; this deterioration appeared to break an unspoken code of coexistence, as if there were no publicly acceptable laws, rules and norms. A filthy island, too, creates the image that it is suffering from neglect by people, authorities or both. If a glass window of a building is broken and remains in a state of disrepair, soon, all the others will be broken as well. If a population shows signs of deterioration and no one seems to care, then crime will thrive.

On so many levels, separate and apart from environment, the idea of cyclic deterioration based on non-changing or perceived brokenness may hold be true to our life’s experiences. One of the most influential philosophies about crime prevention to come out in recent years is a school of thought which refers to the “broken windows theory”. First posited by Wilson et. al. 1982, it advances the theory that small acts of deviance inclusive of littering, graffiti, broken windows will, if ignored, escalate into more triggered defacing and or serious crime within a community.

By no means though, is the “broken windows theory” an excuse for the nasty state in which we find our environment here in New Providence and through out the islands in pockets. The rallying cries from the talk show circuit is for Bahamians to step up their sense of pride beyond the demarcations of their own properties and into the community so as to own their space and neighbourhoods, with or without government cooperation. With this collective effort the difference would be immediately apparent across the length and width of New Providence and by extension the neighbouring Family Islands.

Have you, before your doorstep swept?

Keep thinking though, you are good for it!

• Kirkland H. Pratt, MSCP, is a Counselling Psychologist with a Master’s degree in Counselling Psychology with an emphasis in Education. He lectures in Industrial Psychology and offers counselling and related services to individuals and businesses. For comments, contact kirklandpratt@gmail.com.