STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, THE BROKEN WINDOWS THEORY AND POLICE IN INDIA

Abstract

The research is an attempt to seek whether the experiment and theory propounded by Dr. Zimbardo applies to police officers. Evidence of violence by police in India exists by way of statistics and there are provisions in law to tackle the same. However, the problem of custodial death and violence is always on the rise. The research concludes by the emphasising the need of forming a central, national body that would regulate and keep check on acts of the police guarding prisons. 

Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo, a professor of Psychology at Stanford University, in 1969 conducted an experiment. Abandoning two identical cars (with their licence plate removed and hood up) in two neighbourhoods- the crime-ridden and poor, the Bronx, New York and a posh and quite affluent, Palo Alto, California, it was found the car in the Bronx was vandalised within minutes of it being left there, all valuable parts stolen within 24 hours and as days passed, turned into a place of play for the children. However, the car in Palo Alto remained intact for a week. Zimbardo initially concluded that such a result was caused due to the conditions of impoverishment and crime in the Bronx, which otherwise did not exist in Palo Alto. One week after of the car being left in Palo Alto, Zimbardo smashed its windows with a sledgehammer. 

It received the same destruction as the other car and in days was “turned upside-down”. What does this mean? How could the members of an affluent neighbourhood as such indulge in such a behaviour? Zimbardo finally came to conclude that such acts were not a result of conditions prevalent in a neighbourhood, but because something that is neglected and untended for, transmits the signal: “here nobody cares about this, this is abandoned” (Rovira n.d.). In short, the experiment meant that absence of law and order encourages more crimes in any given situation. The experiment got formally shaped into a theory by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, the “Broken Windows Theory”.  

Two years after, in 1971, Zimbardo conducted a Prison Experiment, converting the basement of Stanford University’s Psychology Department building into a “simulated prison”. After conducting diagnostic interviews and personality tests, Zimbardo chose a sample of 24 male college students from the U.S. and Canada, “healthy, intelligent, middle-class”, who happened to be in the Stanford area and wanted to earn $15/day by participating in the experiment. Divided between two groups, they were arbitrarily assigned the role of prisoner or prison guard. Zimbardo states he was particularly interested in the psychology of prisoners, how they would react when confronted by persons possessing absolute authority. Though, initially planned to last for a fortnight, the experiment was called off within a week realising the extent of abuse, dehumanisation and torture the prisoners were being subjected to.