Zero sense

However, if we are to infer from Government’s actions since, it appears that a major part of the consultant’s advice was that Ministries should take out regular full-page newspaper ads. Frankly, I doubt any modern media expert would actually have advised this — so maybe the PNM has twisted his advice, or maybe he just wanted to get the most money for the least work. At any rate, the PNM regime seems to think that bombarding the public with colour images and a few lines of large-font text will convince citizens that the government is performing.

This has not worked, and it has not worked mainly because the spiralling crime rate shafts any public relations blitz. The problem with the PNM, and governments of developing nations in general, is that they don’t believe in giving out genuine information. Thus, even though crime is the major concern of citizens, the National Security Ministry has never informed the public about any actual strategies nor even the ideological approach it has adopted to fighting crime. The starkest symptom of this reticence was, of course, the sudden appearance of the blimp in the nation’s skies.

The only clue I have ever got about the ideas underlying the Government’s crime strategies came from a rambling contribution by National Security Minister Martin Joseph during a Parliamentary debate in which CEPEP came up. Joseph’s argument was that CEPEP helped reduce crime because of the "Broken Windows" theory. And, if that is in fact the theory that informs Government’s crime plan, it helps explain why the crime rate is rising so steadily.

The Broken Windows hypothesis was popularised about 30 years ago by American criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. I call it a hypothesis, because it does not have the scientific grounding to justify calling it a theory. Wilson’s argument is that small signs of disorder in a neighbourhood — such as a broken window that stays unrepaired - sends a signal to miscreants that encourages them to carry out criminal acts. This increases the neighbourhood’s disorder, and so creates a crime wave.

Wilson’s recommendation was a "zero tolerance" policy. If the police dealt with small offences, such as littering and jaywalking, this would help prevent bigger crimes, such as robbery and murder. This is the policy which supposedly led to the drastic drop in crime in New York under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It is also presumably why we have seen so many police officers here in Trinidad on traffic detail and brothel raids.

However, there is little evidence that the zero tolerance policy works. Harvard law professor Bernard Harcourt, who has written a book about the Broken Windows idea, notes, "The basic fact is that a number of large US cities-Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, among others-have experienced significant drops in crime since the early 1990s, in some cases proportionally larger than the drop in New York City’s crime. But many of these cities have not implemented the type of aggressive order-maintenance policing that New York City did."

Harcourt cites other factors that may have been responsible for the declining crime rates in New York City. These included a shift in drug use patterns from crack cocaine to heroin, favourable economic conditions in the 1990s, a dip in the number of eighteen to twenty-four-year-old males, as well as shifts in adolescent behaviour. There were also major changes in the police department itself. The number of officers was increased by more than a quarter, the police started relying more heavily on new computer technology to compile crime statistics, to convert the data into maps and charts that inform the police about crime patterns in different precincts, and to monitor and review police performance at the district level through regular meetings. Layers of bureaucracy were cut out, younger and more ambitious managers promoted, and more authority delegated to precinct commanders.

Obviously, not all these measures can be implemented in our system. Even more obviously, the Police Reform Bills would have little impact on any of the above factors. And, most blindingly obvious of all — although clearly not so to PNM j?fes — zero tolerance policies cannot work in our society. That would require a police service which was accountable and which did not take bribes. But, once that is not the case, zero tolerance is a joke.

Additionally, even if the Broken Windows hypothesis has some validity, it does not follow that zero tolerance is the correct response. Business guru Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle, argues that the key is not zero tolerance per se, but in targetting the 20 percent of persons who are responsible for 80 percent of the crimes. "Expenditures to cure social problems that does not reach the tipping point is money down the drain," Koch argues. "But if a little extra effort causes the tipping point to be reached, by putting massive effort in to deal with the 20 percent of situations that cause 80 percent of the problems, then the impact of each incremental amount of money or effort is fantastic."

Perhaps this is what Prime Minister Patrick Manning was hoping for, with his talk about crime being temporary. The problem is, reaching the tipping point requires accurate analysis of a particular situation, and accurate analysis only comes from hard data allied to the correct theoretical interpretation. As journalist Malcolm Gladwell notes in his book The Tipping Point (available at RIK), "Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions...In the end, Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action."

But, with Manning in charge, that last point is a deal breaker.