George Lee Kelling, noted criminologist and professor who studied American police and whose work led to major changes in policing strategies during the late 20th century, died May 15, 2019, at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire. He had been ill with congestive heart failure and melanoma for some time.
Born in Milwaukee, WI, on August 21, 1935, George never forgot his Midwestern roots. He grew up in Milwaukee, graduated from Saint Olaf College; attended a Lutheran seminary for two years; and received an M.S.W from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He had two children during his first marriage to Sally Mosiman, which ended in divorce in 1974. In 1982 he married Catherine Coles, an urban anthropologist and attorney.
During his early career George practiced social work, serving as a childcare worker and probation officer, and administered residential care programs for disturbed youths. In 1972 he joined the Police Foundation, beginning the research on and consulting with police that would make up his professional life for the coming decades. He conducted several large-scale experiments, most notably the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment and the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment. The latter gave rise to his best-known publication, “Broken Windows,” an article written with James Q. Wilson that appeared in the Atlantic in 1982. In 1980 he became Executive Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he served several years. He later taught criminal justice at Northeastern University and Rutgers University-Newark.
During the late 1980s, George developed order maintenance policies in the New York City subway that ultimately led to substantial crime reductions. Later he served as a consultant to New York City and Los Angeles Police Departments, working with William Bratton. During the 1990s George and Catherine began collaborating on research and together wrote Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (1996), as well as several articles on community justice. Closing a long line of articles and research reports, George’s final publications were Policing in Milwaukee; A Strategic History (2015); and “Community Policing Rightly Understood” City Journal (Winter 2019).
George worked with police in many major US cities, and lectured and consulted throughout South and Central America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. His focus was not only order maintenance but community policing as the new paradigm that he saw becoming the dominant model for police from the 1990s on. He took pride in conducting research “on the ground”-talking with citizens in local neighborhoods, understanding their concerns; but also riding (and walking, talking and biking) with police so he knew their experiences and views. He believed police could be effective in a democratic society only when they served with the active consent of citizens, in partnership with them. He often quoted Sir Robert Peel, “The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public…paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Retiring from Rutgers in 2010, George continued to consult for police departments until 2016. He was Emeritus Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Professor Emeritus at Northeastern University and former Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
George is survived by his wife, Dr. Catherine Coles, children Kristin Lee (husband Mark) Hayden and George Peer (wife Lorie) Kelling, and four grandchildren; also nieces and nephews Stephanie Tomlin (husband Ian Gregorio de Souza), Amy Lems, Kali Coles (husband Carson Cistulli), Jason Coles (wife Elizabeth), Kevin Coles, Christopher Coles, and many great-nieces and great-nephews, all of whom were special to him. The family thanks Bayada, as well as aides Cathy Giguere and Jen Riel who cared for George with such kindness, and many friends who came to visit him in the last year of his illness. A memorial service will take place in Hanover in late summer at a time to be announced. In lieu of flowers the family would appreciate donations in George’s memory to Doctors Without Borders USA, P.O. Box 5030, Hagerstown, MD. 21741-5030.
To view an online memorial and or send a message of condolence to the family, please visit, www.rand-wilson.com.