NCJ Number
188321
Editor(s)
Andrea McArdle,
Tanya Erzen
Date Published
2001
Length
314 pages
Annotation
This book contains essays that examine the adverse consequences, with a focus on police brutality, of the "Zero Tolerance" policy of crime control in New York City, which aims to enforce every infraction of municipal law, no matter how minor.
Abstract
In profiling New York City's crime-control policy under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the essays note that it is an idiosyncratic version of James Wilson's and George Kelling's "broken windows" theory, which posits a connection between symbols of community disorder--visual and behavioral--and crime. Since 1994, during the two Giuliani administrations, the city's successful initiative to maintain public order and create a new urban esthetics have coalesced in the relentlessly promoted "Quality of Life" campaign. With its punitive "tough love" enforcement ethic aimed at an array of low-level offenses, New York's crime control policy is often linked, and sometimes equated, with "Zero Tolerance," a strict, results-oriented approach to enforcement. The use of surveillance and an aggressive management of public space are crucial to New York City's combined crime-control and order-maintenance initiatives. There are many points of connection among the essays that critique this crime-control policy. They note the devastating impact--materially and symbolically--on the city's more marginalized residents, i.e., the homeless, minorities, the poor, and gays and lesbians. The first section of essays, "Policing the Quality of Life," focuses on the social costs of the Quality of Life initiatives. The next section, "The Police," contains essays that examine dimensions of professional police identity and socialization and their relationship to the city's political and legal culture. Essays in the concluding section, "Activism," illuminate the range of strategies needed--from U.S. and international legal remedies and grassroots organizing to innovative pedagogies--to launch a multifaceted antibrutality campaign. Chapter notes