Reviewing Smith, N. 2001. “Global Social Cleansing: Postliberal Revanchism and the Export of Zero
Tolerance.” Social Justice, 28(3): 68-74. Available online: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3427/is_3_28/ai_n28888957/
While most of the research discussed thus far focuses on examples of order-maintenance policing in the United States, Smith (2001) argues that zero tolerance is being exported globally “at lightening speed” (XX). He notes that a visit to Berlin by William Bratton (between his New York and LA gigs) was followed by the implementation of NYPD-style computerized surveillance of homeless people. Smith discusses similar developments in New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Argentina and England. Like other scholars (e.g., Gilbert 2008; Parenti 1999), Smith ties the proliferation of zero tolerance to global economic restructuring, or what he calls “postliberal globalization.” According to Smith, this restructuring includes a project of social cleansing, which is packaged and sold as a necessity to maintain “decency” and “civility”—terms which are defined through Eurocentric and class-privileged lenses—in order to reduce crime. However, the rhetoric doesn’t match the reality. Take for example the fact that, “violent crime peaked in New York City in 1990 and was already 20% below its peak in 1994, the year zero tolerance was implemented” (XX). Instead of a crime reduction strategy, Smith argues that zero tolerance is “a rapidly crystallizing antidemocratic form of global social control”—one that is rooted in revenge for the successes of the social movements of the 1960s (Smith cites feminist, civil rights, immigrant, and union movements as examples) (XX; XX).
There’s a town up here where “zero policy” started leading to gentrification. Really all zero-policy is is an attempt at stamping on bodily autonomy. You know, if someone wants to kill themselves with crack, fine by me. We’re not free if we don’t even own our own bodies.