Policy Transfer and Zero Tolerance

1
Policy Transfer and Zero Tolerance

• Trevor Jones
• Cardiff University

2
Key Themes

• Little evidence of wholesale imports of US-style
  policing policies and practices.
• Soft policy transfer ideas, principles,
  symbols, rhetoric
• Understanding the local politics of control
• Possibilities for resistance

3
Background

• ESRC Study
• Studying specific areas of policy change
• Perceived US imports policing, sentencing,
  corrections
• Documentary research
• Interviews with key players

4
Context

• Convergence in crime control and penal policy
  (Garland 2001)
• Global penal expansion (Christie 2000)
• Notions of Americanisation (Wacquant 1999)

5
What is Policy Transfer?

• the process by which knowledge of policies,
  administrative arrangements, institutions and
  ideas in one political system (past or present)
  is used in the development of policies,
  administrative arrangements, institutions and
  ideas in another political system (Dolowitz and
  Marsh 2000)
• Key questions in the study of policy transfer
• Who are the key actors?
• Why do they engage in policy transfer?
• What is transferred?
• From where are lessons learned?
• What are the different types of transfer?
• What facilitates or constrains transfer?

6
Studying Policy Transfer

• Timing and policy similarity between
  jurisdictions
• Identification of transfer agents
• Evidence that knowledge about developments in one
  jurisdiction has shaped policy developments in
  another

7
ZERO TOLERANCE IN NEW YORK CITY

• Quality of Life Policing
• COMPSTAT
• Performance management
• Use of civil law
• Media strategy
• Charismatic leadership
• Staffing increases

8
ZERO TOLERANCE POLICING IN BRITAIN

• 1. Cleveland Police
• Confident Policing in Hartlepool and
  Middlesbrough
• Robocop Ray Mallon
• 2. Metropolitan Police
• Operation Zero Tolerance (Kings Cross, London)
• Crackdown on street begging (2000)
• 3. Strathclyde Police
• Operation Spotlight (Glasgow)

9
Levels of policy (Pollitt 2001)

• 1. Policy symbols/rhetoric (Talk)
• General ideas/principles
• Style/rhetoric
• Primarily media politicians
• Explicitly rejected by many senior police
  officers
• 2. Policy instruments (Decisions)
• Legislation, interventions, court rulings, formal
  policy statements
• Within policing sphere, piecemeal/partial
  localised transfer
• Broader ASB agenda (CDA 1998, ASBA 2003)
• 3. Policy implementation (Action)
• Uneven implementation (ASBOs, curfews)
• Elite resistance
• Local politics

10
Policy Transfer Agents

• 1. Senior police officers
• NYPD (Bratton, Maple, Timoney)
• Ray Mallon (1995)
• Metropolitan Police (eg. Paul Condon, John
  Stephens)
• HMIC (1995-6)
• 2. Politicians
• Rudy Giuliani
• Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Alun Michael, Ken
  Livingstone, Michael Howard, Anne Widdecombe,
• 3. Policy entrepreneurs
• Think tanks (Manhatten Institute, IEA)
• George Kelling
• Bratton
• Giuliani

11
Policy Transfer Processes Elite networking

• Study trips
• Official visits
• Political party contacts
• Policy evangelism
• Conferences/seminars

12
Limits to policy transfer

• 1. Political/institutional context
• Post-Scarman policing
• Operational independence
• 2. The local politics of policing
• The messy realities of policy-making
• Uneven cultures of control

13
Understanding policy transfer

• Within the realm of policing, limited evidence of
  hard policy transfer, significant evidence of
  soft transfer from USA
• Stronger evidence of hard transfer (decisions
  and action) in governments broader ASB agenda
• Understanding local political contexts
• Possibilities for resistance