Zero-Tolerance

2 Pages 485 Words

Policing In the USA

The appointment of the Presidents Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1988) marked the beginning of what is generally considered to have been a period of great change in American policing. However the concept of “Zero-tolerance” emerged in the 1980s. Zero tolerance was originally intended to send a message to people that certain behaviors would not be tolerated, by punishing both major and minor offenses severely. The Zero tolerance drug programs led to a host of civil rights controversies (Skiba and Peterson, 1999). The term then caught on among educators concerned about youth violence, and school boards across the country adapted to a zero tolerance policies for a range of disrupted behaviors. In 1994, President Clinton signed the Gun Free Schools Act, mandating one year expulsion for possession of fire arms in school.
Zero Tolerance, the original version was the ‘broken windows’ thesis which promoted the idea of greater use of ‘beat’ police who patrolled neighborhoods on foot and negotiated acceptable public behavior - constantly making distinctions between the respectable and the disreputable. Importantly, in the original thesis public order was improved and maintained through the informal rules which were worked out at the neighborhood level (Wilson and Kelling 1982, p.30). More recently Kelling and Coles (1997) still stress the need for negotiation of a ‘disorder threshold’ and argue that ‘crackdowns’ and street ‘sweeping’ is far different from the ideas proposed in the broken windows thesis.
What are the provisions of the Gun-Free Schools Act?
The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 mandates a 12-month expulsion for possession of a firearm and referral of law-violating students to the criminal or juvenile justice system. It also requires that state law must authorize the chief administrative officer of each local school district to modify such expulsions on...