Pubdate: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Author: Malcolm Brown 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. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry