George L. Kelling is an American criminologist, a professor emeritus in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and a former fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He previously taught at Northeastern University.
Kelling attended Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary to study theology for two years, but earned no degree. He received a B.A. in philosophy from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, an M.S.W. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973, under Alfred Kadushin.
Early in his career, he was a child care counselor and a probation officer, but his later career has been spent in academia. The author of numerous articles, he developed the broken windows theory with James Q. Wilson and Catherine Coles.