Zero Tolerance - History

History

The term "Zero Tolerance" appeared for the first time in a report in 1994. The idea behind this expression can be traced back to the Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Act, approved in New Jersey in 1973, of which inherits the same underlying assumptions. The ideas behind the 1973 New Jersey policy were later popularized in 1982, when a popular magazine published the 'broken window' theory of crime.

In 1982, conservatives James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling formulated their theory in the article Broken Windows, published in The Atlantic Monthly, a U.S. cultural magazine.

The title of the article comes from the following example:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants.

According to scholars, zero tolerance is the concept of giving carte blanche to the police for the inflexible repression of minor offenses, homeless people and the disorders associated with them. A well known criticism to this approach is that it redefines social problems in terms of security, it considers the poor as criminals, and it reduces crimes to only "street crimes", those committed by lower social classes, excluding white-collar crimes.

On the historical examples of the application of zero tolerance kind of policies, nearly all the scientific studies conclude that it didn't play a leading role in the reduction of crimes, a role which is instead claimed by its advocates. On the other hand, large majorities of people who living in communities in which zero tolerance policing has been followed believe that in fact has played a key, leading role in reducing crime in their communities. It has been alleged that in New York City, the decline of crimes rate started well before Rudy Giuliani came to power, in 1993, and none of the decreasing processes had particular inflection under him. and that in the same period of time, the decrease in crime was the same in the other major US cities, even those with an opposite security policy. But the experience of the vast majority of New Yorkers led them to precisely the opposite conclusion and allowed a Republican to win, and hold, the Mayor's office for the first time in decades in large part because of the perception that zero tolerance policing was key to the improving crime situation in New York City. On the other hand, some argue that in the years 1984-7 New York already experienced a policy similar to Giuliani's one, but it faced a crime increase instead.

Two of the best American specialists, Edward Maguire, an Associate Professor at American University, and John Eck from the University of Cincinnati, rigorously evaluated all the scientific work designed to test the efficiency of the police in the fight against crime. They concluded that "neither the number of policemen engaged in the battle, or internal changes and organizational culture of law enforcement agencies (such as the introduction of community policing) have by themselves impact on the evolution of offenses."

The crime decrease was due not the work of the police and judiciary, but to economic and demographic factors. The main ones were an unprecedented economic growth with jobs for millions of young people, and a shift from the use of crack towards other drugs.

Since the original 1973 program had a positive impact on the citizens, who were left with the false impression it had improved their safety, the program has been described as a public relation policy instead of a safety one.