A zero-tolerance policy is one which imposes a punishment for every infraction of a stated rule. Zero-tolerance policies forbid people in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are required to impose a predetermined punishment regardless of individual culpability, extenuating circumstances, or history. This predetermined punishment, whether mild or severe, is always meted out. Zero-tolerance policies are studied in criminology and are common in both formal and informal policing systems around the world. The policies also appear in informal situations where there may be sexual harassment or Internet misuse in educational and workplace environments. In 2014, the mass incarceration in the United States based upon low-level offenses has resulted in an outcry on the use of zero tolerance in schools and communities. Little evidence supports the claimed effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies. One underlying problem is that there are a great many reasons why people hesitate to intervene, or to report behavior they find to be unacceptable or unlawful. Zero-tolerance policies address, at best, only a few of these reasons.
Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the first recorded use of the term "zero tolerance" was in 1972 and was originally used in US politics. However, the term appears as early as 1939 in reference to plant diseases ("While a zero tolerance may seem a severe penalty ..."), in 1942 in reference to optical equipment ("They cut and polish glass precisely to 'zero tolerance,' ..."), and in 1945 in reference to poultry diseases ("Your safety is in buying chicks hatched from breeders showing zero tolerance."). It also appeared in the mid-1960s, in reference to an absolute ban on the pesticide heptachlor by the US Food and Drug Administration. For example, an article that appeared in the June 1963 issue of Popular Mechanics stated "Heptachlor, though, is even more toxic and has been given a 'zero tolerance' by the FDA; that is, not even the slightest trace of heptachlor is permitted on food."
History The idea behind zero-tolerance policies can be traced back to the Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Act, which was approved in New Jersey in 1973 and had the same underlying assumptions. The ideas behind the 1973 New Jersey policy were later popularized in 1982, when a US cultural magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, published an article by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling about the broken windows theory of crime. Their name for the idea 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 and excludes white-collar crimes. On the historical examples of the application of zero tolerance kind of policies, nearly all the scientific studies conclude that it failed to play the leading role in the reduction of crimes that is claimed by its advocates. On the other hand, large majorities of people who are living in communities in which zero-tolerance policing has been followed believe that it has actually played a key, leading role in reducing crime in their communities. It has been alleged that in New York City, the decline of the crime rate had started well before Rudy Giuliani came to power in 1993. None of the decreasing processes had any particular inflection under him, and during the same period, the decrease in crime was the same in the other major US cities, even those with an opposite security policy. However, the experience of the vast majority of New Yorkers led them to precisely the opposite conclusion and allowed a Republican to win and retain the Mayor's office for the first time in decades, in large part because of the perception that zero-tolerance policing was playing key to the city's improving crime situation. On the other hand, some argue that in 1984-1987, the city had already experienced a policy similar to Giuliani's but instead faced an increase in the crime rate. Two American specialists, Edward Maguire, a professor at American University, and John Eck from the University of Cincinnati, rigorously evaluated all the scientific work designed to test the effectiveness 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 any impact on the evolution of offenses." They argue that the crime decrease was caused by not the work of the police and the judiciary but economic and demographic factors: mainly an unprecedented economic growth with jobs for millions of young people and a shift from the use of crack towards other drugs. An alternative argument comes from Kelling and William Bratton, Giuliani's original police chief, who argue that broken windows policing methods contributed to the decrease in crime but they were not a form of zero tolerance:
Critics use the term "zero tolerance" in a pejorative sense to suggest that Broken Windows policing is a form of zealotry—the imposition of rigid, moralistic standards of behavior on diverse populations. It is not. Broken Windows is a highly discretionary police activity that requires careful training, guidelines, and supervision, as well as an ongoing dialogue with neighborhoods and communities to ensure that it is properly conducted Sheldon Wein has set out a list of six characteristics of a zero-tolerance policy:
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