Zero Tolerance Is a Good Way to Reduce Crime

Minor offenders, gang members, and the poor are extremely unlikely to be aware of the punishments for the crimes which they commit so deterrence doesn’t have much effect there. Many crimes are a product of necessity (through poverty and drugs) and therefore can be reduced only by structural changes to the society, not by threatening punishment. The idea of a ‘short sharp shock’ is unconvincing. Labelling people as criminals at an early age actually causes them to perceive themselves as such and gives them fewer other options by placing them outside mainstream society. This leads to ‘deviance amplification’ where convicts increasingly commit more serious crimes as a result of their contact with law enforcement.

Arresting small-scale pushers (many of them addicts) and users is targeting the victims to stop the crime. As well as being unfair it is ineffective. As long as there is a demand there will be drug dealing and demand can only be stopped by rehabilitation. This does not occur in prison. It is in big drug syndicates (which we won’t have the resources to combat if everyone is patrolling) that drug dealing is associated with violence.

Prison sentences contribute to a far higher tendency to re-offend. It would be nice if they had a rehabilitative role but we have to look at the reality. Juveniles sent to prison are less employable afterwards so more likely to resort to crime. They meet established criminals in prison who both encourage the lifestyle and teach necessary skills for criminal behaviour. Prison often fosters resentment of the police and the courts and anyway the harassment of juveniles associated with zero tolerance already creates an extremely antagonistic relationship with the police.

In reality Zero Tolerance gives the police almost limitless power in poor communities. They are able to stop and search, and harass individuals constantly. Everyone who carries marijuana cannot be arrested so in reality certain vulnerable groups, usually ethnic minorities, are targeted and labelled as criminals. New York saw a vast growth in complaints over police racism and harassment after zero tolerance and Liverpool’s system was closed down because of corruption and unacceptable aggression by police officers.

Urban regeneration is one of the most powerful ways of targeting crime and it occurs entirely independently of zero tolerance. For every city where the two have both been associated with a falling crime rate (New York) there is an area where regeneration has worked on its own to solve a crime problem (Hong Kong, Brixton in London). The most important element of urban regeneration is the way individuals come to take pride in their area. This is far more likely when it is not associated with police persecution, antagonism with the government and constant fear of arrest. No police presence is sufficient to properly defend a business which has not fostered good relations with the local community.

The enormous expense of zero tolerance in money and manpower and prisons actually makes policing worse. Either we have to throw limitless money at doubling the number of officers (it is almost impossible to recruit and train so many even if we could afford it). Or we have to divert officers away from investigations and serious crime prevention in order to put them back on the pavement. This reduces detection of important crimes in return for catching graffiti artists. Even when reported crime rates drop this does not prove that zero tolerance achieves anything because it is corporate crime, large scale drug dealing that is ignored and these are rarely reported. A patrolling officer might pass a burglary every 18 years and probably wouldn’t notice it.