Community Justice

George Lee Kelling was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 21, 1935. He received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from St. Olaf College, a master's degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a doctorate in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He worked as a probation officer and ran a residential-care program for troubled youth before being hired in 1972 as a consultant to the National Police Foundation, a research and advocacy group, to evaluate how best to deploy officers.

In 1982, Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote an article entitled Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety for The Atlantic magazine. The premise of the article was that even one broken window in a community can signal that no one cares and that this kind of neglect can lead to disorder and crime. Kelling and his wife Catherine M. Coles wrote the book Fixing Broken Windows, which was published in 1996. He died from complications of cancer on May 15, 2019 at the age of 83.

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