By Sue Boland
Prime Minister John Howard's campaign against the dangers of heroin has focussed almost exclusively on advocating tougher law and order policies rather than treating drug-use as a health issue. "Zero tolerance" policing is Howard's favoured policy.
Zero tolerance policing is based on the idea that a tough law enforcement approach towards minor crime, particularly public order offences, will prevent more serious offences from occurring.
It originated from United States president Ronald Reagan's "war on drugs" during the 1980s. The emphasis was on locking up drug users. It is similar to the policing used in Britain prior to the inner city riots of the early 1980s.
NSW police commissioner Peter Ryan and his Victorian counterpart, Neil Comrie, say the resources for zero tolerance policing do not exist in Australia and deny this method is being used in their states. The experiences of young people contradicts this.
"We've already got zero tolerance [in NSW]", Kilty O'Gorman from the civil rights group Justice Action told Green Left Weekly. "The knife laws [which allow police to stop and search people] already give police that power."
Jim Mellor from the Positive Justice Centre agreed. He described zero tolerance policing in the US as a package: mandatory sentences, arming police with more weapons, building more jails, extensive police stop-and-search powers and the authority to arrest for trivial offences.
In NSW, Mellor said, "the Labor government has introduced the components of zero tolerance policing incrementally, without calling it that".
Lakemba and Bankstown in Sydney at the end of last year were suburbs under siege. They were blitzed with hundreds of police who strip searched people as young as 14 on the street. Young people of Lebanese background were especially targeted. This is New York-style zero tolerance policing.
A similar situation exists in Victoria. Catherine Gow, from the Darebin Community Legal Centre and a member of People's Justice Alliance, told Green Left Weekly that zero tolerance was piloted in Springvale 18 months ago.
Six months later, the police announced that it would no longer be used. However, Gow added, young people in Springvale and Footscray report that massive over-policing remains. Gow said she suspects that the police have not abandoned zero tolerance, even if it's not official government policy.
The New York model
Chris Cuneen, director of the Sydney University Institute of Criminology, has studied the use of zero tolerance policing in New York and recently prepared a paper for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
In New York, Cuneen found, local police chiefs are pressured to reduce "crime" in their area. Their performance is based on the number of street searches and building searches they carry out, the number of summonses and warrants they issue and arrests they make.
The sorts of "offences" people are arrested for include graffiti, vagrancy, begging, windscreen washing, fare evasion, illegal vending, street-level drug dealing, street prostitution, public drunkenness, loitering, drinking beer in public, offensive language, truancy and riding a bicycle without a bell or lights. For such minor offences people can spend 24 to 48 hours in custody before appearing in court.
Other zero policing tactics used in New York, Cuneen found, were complete sealing off of city parks and squares and the detention of everybody within them. Similarly, the police seal off neighbourhoods while they carry out "sweeps", often with the use of helicopters. During these operations, residents are forced to remain indoors. "This strategy is known as 'barricading' — in which an entire block can be laid siege to for weeks", Cuneen wrote.
As a result, drug dealing moved indoors and there was a massive increase in police raids on houses. Between 1994 and 1997 the number of people requiring reimbursement for damage caused by wrongful police raids increased by 50%.
Complaints against police brutality have soared, to 10,000 in three years according to Channel Nine's Sunday program on March 7. In that time, New York City paid out more than $100 million to settle police misconduct claims.
A 1996 Amnesty International report found that aggressive zero tolerance policing "had been accompanied by unacceptable levels of brutality, especially towards racial minorities". Cuneen reported that New York Police Department figures for 1993-94 showed a 35% increase in the number of civilians who died from police shootings and a 53% increase in the number of people who died in police custody.
Cuneen also noted a crackdown on political organisation, with the police refusing permits for marches and rallies, allowing no more than 30 people to assemble at one time. In one instance, three political activists were charged with "unlawful solicitation and unlawful assembly, meeting and exhibition" when collecting petition signatures in a park.
In conjunction with zero tolerance policing, mandatory minimum sentencing was introduced. A Justice Policy Institute report showed that California's three-strikes law had no effect on reducing violent crime. The counties implementing the three-strikes law most stringently did not experience the greatest decrease in crime.
While the rationale for the law was to stop violent crimes, less than 1% of the almost 40,000 people jailed under the Californian law were convicted of murder, 37% were convicted of property crimes and 30% of drug offences, mostly possession. The proportion of black men incarcerated has increased 10 times faster than for whites.
Similarly, Cuneen notes that there is no evidence that zero tolerance policing reduces crime. Some US cities that do not use zero tolerance policing have had bigger reductions in crime.
In Australia, in addition to Victoria and NSW, the Northern Territory trialed zero tolerance policing in 1988 and the Western Australian police use zero tolerance against bikie gangs.
When zero tolerance trials were being carried out in the NT, the government foreshadowed that laws against loitering were likely to be strengthened, public drunkenness re-criminalised and the law which prohibits alcohol consumption in particular areas would be more rigorously policed.
Cuneen points out that zero tolerance focuses on street offences. Because it tends to ignore the major type of violence, domestic violence, it does not make the community any safer. While focusing on minor property crime, it ignores corporate crime.
"Zero tolerance doesn't lock away the people who might make society unsafe", adds Gow. Instead, "it catches a whole new class or group of people — usually young people, people of colour, homeless people and people with mental illness. These are the people who will land in prison for non-violent offences."
Ideological attack
If state police commissioners are saying they don't need zero tolerance policing and young people are saying that they're already experiencing it in the street, why is Howard campaigning for Australia to adopt zero tolerance policing?
Howard's advocacy of zero tolerance policing is ideological. By advocating tougher law and order policies, he hopes to convince the majority of people that it is necessary for us to suffer a major restriction on civil liberties in order to catch "drug dealers" and "prevent crime" — too bad if the statistics don't support the argument.
Since the Howard government took office in 1996 it has relied on scapegoating as a method of convincing people that the rights of others need to be mowed down.
The first to be targeted were Aborigines and non-English speaking migrants, for supposedly getting privileges. Then it was the unemployed, for not being prepared to work for the dole. They too were portrayed as getting privileges at the expense of other workers.
Trade unionists were next, for insisting that employers pay proper wages and not be allowed to extend junior rates of pay. They were painted as being responsible for unemployment.
Now drug users are being scapegoated to justify a major attack on the civil rights of every working-class person.
Howard's push on zero tolerance policing and scapegoating has one purpose — to undermine solidarity between working-class people by making us scared of each other or resent each other. If Howard can succeed in destroying social solidarity, it makes it easier for his government, on behalf of his mates who own companies like BHP and News Ltd, to get on with robbing us all by introducing the GST, cutting wages and conditions, and slashing access to welfare services, health care and child-care.