A Tangent

[akirlu]

I suspect the seductive appeal of "Zero Tolerance" policies is that they sound so damn' macho. Just let the words roll off your tongue: Zero Tolerance. ZEE-row TALL-erance. Hoo boy. It's right up there with 'Extreme Prejudice' and 'Collateral Damage' in the Boy's Own Guide to Blood-chilling Euphemisms. It's the sort of proclamation you might expect to hear from Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson, right before they blow you away. With a very big gun. It's tough talk, (presumed to be) backed by tough actions, it brooks no nonsense, it has an erection as big as Cleveland and as hard as a titanium calculus final. This is Srs Bzns. Republican candidates love to be all up in our faces with Zero Tolerance and Three Strikes and similar posturing blowhard-i-har-har, the more so the closer election time draws.

Hmm. Surely this should serve as a strong warning to rational persons who don't happen to be a Republican running for office?

The problem with zero tolerance policies, generally speaking, is that in order to be meaningful, they must be followed automatically, and without exception. That's what 'zero tolerance' means, after all. But because of the purely mechanical enforcement that this requires, such policies allow no room for nuance, discrimination, judgement, or second chances. They tolerate no shades of gray. It's all pour encourager les autres. Does the violation fit within the rule of the law? Okay, then, hammer comes down. This leads to school children getting expelled for forgetting they had left a cake knife in their backpack from an unrelated event. Or for having a plastic picnic knives to spread the peanut butter onto their crackers. Because a knife is a knife is a knife, and that is grounds for expulsion for the first offense. Policies that force stupid outcomes in edge cases where their wording is insufficiently nuanced are stupid policies.

But like I say, zero tolerance policies must be enforced across the board, in every case, or they have no meaning. Otherwise you undermine not only the force of the policy itself, but also your own authority in making and enforcing any other policies. This is why any organization should think long and hard before instituting any kind of zero tolerance policy, because once you have one, woe betide you if you start making exceptions. If you find yourself faced with an uncomfortable edge case, you suck it up and enforce the policy anyway and revisit your policy when there are no cases before you. If you formulate a more lenient or nuanced policy and decide to apply it to old cases retroactively, then that, too, must be done for everyone. Otherwise you'll just be accused of favoritism and situational ethics. And with some justice.

Comments

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

Just so.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

I thought "zero tolerance" was popular because it required zero thought, judgement, or possibility of being wrong.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

It sounds tough, and may deter some real gang members from bringing real knives deliberately (or from being caught using them). But an honor student just back from church camp won't think about what harmless thing in her backpack might get her suspended. Imo if there must be a 'zero tolerance', the rule should specify what kind of knives are covered, and/or the one size fits all punishment should be something that won't affect a good student's grade average (such as community service).

Supergee had a very good entry about a cycle of zero tolerance proving too draconian and leading back to its opposite, round and round.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both counts. One of the problems with policy establishment, zero-tolerance or not, is that it tends to be ad hoc as a result of past problems and leaves gaping holes wherever something hasn't come up yet, and it's usually suited for "fighting the last war," as the saying goes. According to what I've read, this particular policy was established to deal with one particular guy, on whom it was successfully implemented some years ago. Now they find it applying to somebody the administrators know and like personally, and, well ... Should he actually be banned? I don't know, but what you think of him personally outside of this incident (I don't know him at all) shouldn't be the determining factor.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Hmm.... I think there's a difference between "zero tolerance" of an action ('this is always unacceptable') and "zero tolerance" of a person ('this one act makes you guilty for life'). I've been rolling this around for a while, long before Readercon, about our current prison system. Eventually a longer essay might spring forth.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The problem is as you put it. If you say we have 'zero tolerance' of something then you don't get to back peddle on that because you like somebody personally - which appears to be the problem here, that the people who came up with the policy didn't think it would ever apply to one of their own.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, this is an important distinction to draw, for sure. Thanks for raising it. Someone on the SMOFs list also raised the idea of focusing the stringency of policy on member/participant behavior -- certain behavior is always disallowed -- without restricting or requiring specifics as to what the committee response *must* be. If the wording is even changed to "we reserve the right to..." from "we will..." then there is room for making decisions based on the specifics of a particular violation of the policy.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm willing to believe the committee when they say that their decision is not based specifically on personal friendship/acquaintance but rather on their expectation of non-recidivism. The latter is a legitimate issue, I think. It matters whether your perpetrator can see the problem with his actions and is remorseful and seeking to correct his actions, or not. If you're dealing with an intransigent serial offender then a permanent ban makes perfect sense. You don't want to subject anyone else to repeat performances of bad behavior if you can reasonably predict them. The point in punitive action is not the punishment itself but the prevention (or at least strong discouragement) of future recurrences.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

They also have a tendency to reduce the desire to convict.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I've seen a foreman post that shop safety rules may sound odd because each one is written in blood; ie, established hastily in reaction to some bad thing that really happened

On the simpler issue of weapons in school, yes, a policy such as permanent expulsion may have been established after one known gang delinquent drew blood of another student, with the object of throwing the book at any other gang delinguent type who tries it, and good riddance. -- Then some harmless and valuable honor student forgets a manicure kit in her backpack, and here comes Billy Budd at the Caine Mutiny Court Martial.

Imo the rule should be written in the first place with both kinds of incident in mind.

[seattle-janice.livejournal.com]

Love the sinner, hate the sin?