“零度宽容”降低了纽约的犯罪率

纽约曾经一度全世界的谋杀之都。但现在它的高楼大峡谷已不再是为它赚得这个不值得羡慕的绰号的杀人场了。每年死亡人数已由1990年的高达2245人降到了1997年的760人。最近一次谋杀率如此之低是在30年前1967年，那是和平，友爱和嬉皮士流行的年代。

随着杀人率的降低，其他犯罪如盗窃、抢劫和枪击案的狂热也明显低落了。这一局面的形成还得感谢市长鲁道夫•朱利亚尼在1994年开始实行的严打政策。这项强硬政策取得了如此大的成功，以致五年前*“法律和秩序”政纲当选的朱利亚自信地说，他的城市现在可被视为反犯罪关键的模范城市。这样的声言在以前是难以想象的。但是朱利亚尼及其任用的两名统管纽约警察的人-------所采用的“零度宽容”的治安政策已把犯罪活动猖獗的街道变成了秩序良好的街道。

纽约现行的治安政策是基于1983年美国学者詹姆斯•威森和乔治•凯林所著题为“被打碎的玻璃窗”的文章制定的，文章中提出要打击低级犯罪活动，以此来降低一切犯罪活动。如果一幢居民大楼的一扇玻璃穷被打碎了却不去修理好，这就是一个信号，说明关心。很快更多的玻璃窗就会被打碎，一种无法无天的感觉就会滋生，鼓励旁人去从事更多的犯罪活动。文章说，肃清街头的轻微如同修理被砸碎的玻璃窗一样，传感效应会制止更严重的犯罪。

纽约人投票支持增收一种特别税，以募集约10亿美元（相当于82亿人民币）来与犯罪行为作斗争，警力增加了7000人。 想办法与犯罪行为作斗争的责任从权力集中的市政府下放到各区警察局的警长手里，警察使用计算机，更容易跟踪和瞄准犯罪动向。

由于实施了“零度宽容”政策，不允许、也不宽容哪怕最小的罪行，结果对一切取了严厉得多的态度。包括：强行乞讨钱物、小量毒品交易、乱帖标签广告、乘坐地铁逃票和街头其他违反社会常规的行为。蒂莫尼用跳跃旋转栅门而逃票者为例说明了“被打碎的玻璃窗”理论所起的作用。警方发现22%的逃票者是因其他犯罪而受到通辑，或者因携带枪支而应该被捕的人。蒂莫尼说：“我们仅仅因为一名男子逃避付一美元的车票而拘捕他，却发现他是毒品贩子，口袋里藏着可卡因和5万美元。”

纽约的全世界的注意，也使布拉顿和蒂莫尼丢掉了他们的作。他们两人都被朱利亚尼解雇了，因为这位市长感到他们抢走了本该属于自己的荣誉。蒂莫尼后来成为世界各处警察的一名咨询顾问，宣传“零度宽容”治安政策的好处。

有讽刺的意味的是，前波士顿巡警，后升为纽约警长的布拉顿却显然不喜欢“零度宽容”这个说法，认为它意味着对任何偏离社会准则的行为缺乏宽容。对纽约治安政策的批评者指出，“零度宽容”政策恰恰鼓励了不宽容的态度。他们指出，在过去五年中，美国全国各地的城市犯罪率都有所下降，不仅仅是在纽约，即使是在那些没有执行“零度宽容”政策的州，犯罪率也在下降；与此同时，美国监狱中的口急剧上升。正因为如此，犯罪学家说明显变化的真正原因要复杂得多，而且没有真正弄清楚。美国人口的年龄和性格的变化最有可能卷入年轻人（18---24岁）的人数减少了。许多罪犯已关在监狱中也是犯罪减少的原因。

犯罪学者学格雷格•纽博尔德说，以一种难以解释的循环方式忽上忽下，减少没有简单的解决方法。加重判刑和增加警察人数只能增加纳税人的负担，并不一定能继续降低犯罪率。罪犯会学会适应那些手段，并找到规避的方法。

英国泰晤士河流域警政署长查尔斯•波拉德把“零度宽容”的治安政策称为短期疗法，对存在大量轻微市区效果很好。他告诉《经济学家》说，一旦轻微犯罪得到了控制，犯罪率的大幅度下降就会减慢。观察家们说，由于纽约犯罪率过去极高，所以几乎任何一种强硬的警察政策都必然会使它的犯罪率下降。

警察联合会主席格雷格•奥康纳赞同这一点。他说：“你们可以谈论你们喜欢的所有方法，但最终能使罪犯不去作案的招数还是使他们相信被抓住。当盗窃案破案率只有18%，多数作案人不相信自己会被抓住的时候，盗窃就成为一种无风险的职业。”

然而，犯罪学家纽博尔德争论道，“零度宽容”的治安政策是一种危险的时尚，由于它给予了警察特大的权力，所以极易造成一支傲慢的警察队伍。对纽约警察欺负少数民族的指责去年增加了，当时两名纽约白人警察被指控殴打和性折磨海地移民阿布纳•路易马，另外两名白人警官被指控在警车上对他施暴。据称一名警察对路易马说：“现在是朱利亚尼时代。”

但是警察联合会主度奥康纳说，“碎玻璃窗”的方法并不定就会导致警察的越轨行为。他把“零度宽容”政策称为是对双方都有益处的解决方法。制订长期奏效的方案还必须考虑其他因素，“但是，如果你不抓住罪犯，你就不能对他们进行改造。各种新方法都会起作用，但你得问一问：‘它们对犯罪会不会产生影响？’而且你得从实力地位出发地位出发去寻求解决。如果你谈话的那些对象不相信自己会被抓起来，并认为警察不过是一种摆设，那就算了吧！”

强调纽约治理的成功向警察和有关社区本身传递了一个微妙的信息，即犯罪是可以制止的。

“Zero Tolerance” Lowers New York Crime Rate

New York was once the murder capital of the world. But its urban canyons are no longer the killing fields that earned the city its unenviable title.. The annual death toll, which soared to a record high of 2,245 in 1990, dropped to 760 in 1997. The last time the murder rate was as low as that was 30 years previously in 1967, the year of peace and love and the flowering of hippiedom.

With the decrease in killing has come a marked reduction in enthusiasm for other crime, such as burglaries, robberies and shootings. The old saying, crime doesn’t pay, has taken on new life, thanks to hard-line policing introduced by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994. Its success has been such that Giuliani, elected five years ago on a law and order platform, confidently says his city can now be seen as a leader in crime fighting. Such a claim would once have been unimaginable, but the zero-tolerance policing policy introduced by Giuliani and the two men be appointed to run the city’s police force,former commissioner William Bratton and former deputy commissioner John Timoney, has turned the mean streets into clean streets.

New York’s policing is based on a 1983 paper called “Broken Windows”, written by American academics James Wison and George Kelling, which suggested a clamp-down on low-level crime as a way of lowering all crime. If a broken window in an apartment block was not fixed, it was a sign that no one cared. Soon more windows would be broken and a sense of lawlessness engendered, encouraging others to commit more crime. Cleaning up minor crime on the streets was like fixing broken windows, it sad, and the flow-on effect would curb more serious crime.

New Yorkers voted for a special tax to raise about $US1 billion (Rmb8.2 billion) to fight crime and another 7,000 officers were added to the force. The responsibility for ways of fighting crime devolved from a centralized bureaucracy to precinct commanders, and police used computers to track and target crime trends more easily.

This resulted in a much harder attitude against all crime, “zero tolerance” being the policy of not allowing or tolerating even the smallest crimes. These included aggressive begging, minor drug dealing, taggers, turnstile jumpers in the subways and all forms of anti-social behaviour on the streets. Timoney uses trunstile jumpers as an illustration of the broken windows theory at work. Poloce found that 22 percent of turnstile jumpers were wanted for other crimes or were liable for arrest because they carried guns. “We arrested one man simply for jumping a $ 1 turnstile and found that he was a drug dealer carrying cocaine and $50,000 in his pockets,” says Timoney.

New York’s transformation attracted global attention and cost Bratton and Timoney their jobs. They were both sacked by Giuliani, who felt they were stealing his glory. Timoney has since acted as a consultant to police throughou7t the world, preaching the benefits of zero-tolerance policing.

Ironically, Bratton, the former Boston beat cop who rose to head New York’s finest, evidently doesn’t like the term zero-tolerance because he thinks it implies a lack of tolerance for any deviation from social norms. Critics of New York policing say that intolerance is exactly what zero-tolerance policing encourages. They point out that urban crime has fallen right across the United States in the past five years not just in New York, and even in states where zero-tolerance policing is not practiced, while the country’s jail population has dramatically increased. Because of this, criminologists say the real reasons for swings in crime rates are much more complex and not really understood. Shifts in the nature of America’s population ages and character have reduced the number of young men (age 18-24) most likely to be involved in crime. Crime is also reduced when many more criminals are in jail.

Criminologist Greg Newbold says that crime rates spiral up and down in unexplained cycles and there are no easy solutions to reducing crime. Tougher sentences and more police mean an increasing drain on tax payers there is no certainty that they will continue to lower crime levels. Criminals will learn to live with those methods and find ways around them.

Charles Pollard, the chief constable of Thames Valley in Britain, calls zero-tolerance policing a short-term cure that works well in urban areas with large amounts of petty crime. Once petty crime is brought under control, he told the Economist, sharp drops in crime will diminish. Observers say the drop in New York crime had to come with the introduction of almost any new tough police policy, because the crime rate was so high.

Police Association president Greg O’Connor agrees. “You can talk all the theories you like but, at the end of the day, what will stop criminals from committing crime is the belief that they will be caught. When only 18 percent of burglaries are being solved, and most of them don’t believe they will be caught, burglary becomes something of a risk-free occupation.”

However, criminologist Newbold argues that zero-tolerance policing is a dangerous fad that risks creating an arrogant police force because it gives police extraordinary powers. Accusations that New York police harassed minorities were heightened last year when two shite New York policemen were charged with the beating and ***ual torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, and two other white officers were charged with assaulting him in a police car. One policeman allegedly told Louima, “It’s Giuliani time.”

But police president O’Connor says that the broken windows approach doesn’t necessarily lead to police harassment. He calls zero-tolerance policing a “win-win solution”. Other factors must be considered for long-term solutions, “but, if you don’t catch criminals, you can’t rehabilitate them. All the initiatives have to work but you have to ask, ‘Will they impact on crime?’ and you have to bargain from a position of strength. If you’re talking to kids who don’t think they are going to get caught and who think the police are a joke, then forget it.”

Highlighting New York’s success provides a subtle message to police and the communities themselves that crime can be stopped.