I had an interesting meeting with Police Association President Greg O’Connor the other day. The purpose of the meeting was two fold:  to update Greg on the final version of ”three strikes”; and secondly for me to get some feedback from the Police regarding the issue of possibly treating assaults on police more seriously.

We ended up having a wide ranging discussion – all the way from the Arthur Alan Thomas case forty years ago and its aftermath, to different strategies  tried in the US for curbing crime. I like to think we both learned something – I certainly found Greg to be very well informed and willing to listen.

We both agreed that: 1) crime had peaked in the US in the early 1990′s; and 2) that thereafter it had plummeted, both in “three strikes” states and those that had used other approaches. I was aware that New York – a non three strikes state – had experienced a slightly greater drop in crime than California, which is of course the home of what the Americans call the “three strikes movement.”

“Three strikes” type laws are what experts call “sentence enhancement” – laws which, when certain criteria are met, impose a greater penalty than would otherwise have been the case for a particular offence. Such “enhancements” include sentences without parole – such as at second and third strike in our proposed law – to an automatic doubling of judge given sentences, and a myriad of options in between including so called “hard time”.

That is tackling crime at the sentencing end. The other widely used approach is “front end”, where the focus is on certain apprehension and punishment, rather than enhanced sentencing. Zero tolerance policing, aka “broken windows” is the epitome of the front end approach, and is synonymous with New York State under Governor Giuliani and Police Chief Bratton.

I was interested to learn that New York has changed its policies at both the “front end” – so called minor crime is no longer ignored – and with regard to sentence enhancement. Interestingly, where resources - such as prison beds – force a choice of one or the other, the New York approach is to let minor offenders out earlier if necessary so the certainty of imprisonment following conviction – even for a short time – remains possible.

This is consistent with psychological studies which show that to be effective, punishment must be 1) certain; 2) immediate; and 3) proportionate.  New York seems to show that if imprisonment is inevitable upon conviction, people will avoid actions which bring that consequence.

The lesson is clear, and one which perhaps all sides of the debate on reducing crime can agree: there is no one silver bullet.  A zero tolerance approach to policing along with sentence enhancement for those who will not learn works best. Certainly better than the “interventions” we have been pursuing without effect for more than 20 years.