Policing, crime and public health

Abstract

This article examines the influence on policing in Sydney, Australia of the crime control strategies developed in New York City in the 1990s, which are popularly credited with having significantly reduced crime rates. The ‘New York miracle’ is considered as an ‘enthusiasm’, a positive relation of the moral panic. Claims that the NYPD reduced crime with a strategy based on ‘zero tolerance’ or ‘broken windows’ are critically examined. The second half of the article presents a case study of how international developments in policing impacted on a heroin market in Cabramatta, a suburb of Sydney which, in the 1990s, became known as Australia’s ‘heroin capital’. The study shows how transferred policies are implemented, how elements of them may conflict, and how the crucial transfer may be not so much of particular policies, but rather of less specific perceptions and attitudes, in this case a confidence in the ability of police to reduce crime. It concludes by focusing on the collateral damage (particularly to public health) caused by police crackdowns on drug markets. Research is reported which found an alarming increase in the incidence of hepatitis C among intravenous drug users as a result of policing activity in Cabramatta.