ZERO TOLERANCE 'FLAWED'

The "zero tolerance" concept borrowed from American policing is
fundamentally flawed, unsuitable to Australia and likely to be
counter-productive, an academic warns in a paper to be delivered to an
international police symposium at Sydney University today.

Associate Professor David Dixon, of the law faculty at the University
of NSW, says in his paper, Beyond Zero Tolerance, that when tried in
Cabramatta from mid-1997, zero tolerance had some effect in crime
control but had serious side effects and no overall impact on the drug
trade.

Professor Dixon says the issue has to be addressed because of its
place in "the degenerate context of Australian law-and-order politics".

Australians tended to underestimate their own achievements in law and
order and to "cringe" to the United States. In fact, Australia had a
"commitment to a broader state capacity in welfare and public health
and inclusive policies of multiculturalism and reconciliation".

Australia's priority, he says, should be translating harm minimisation
into policing practice, rather than indulging in "bizarre American
fantasies of 'zero tolerance'."

He observes that NSW police already have wide powers. Stopping and
searching someone on "reasonable suspicion" is poorly supervised so in
effect the elements of a zero tolerance regime exist here anyway.