Johns Hopkins senior Blake Trettien has won the 2006
Abell Foundation Award in Urban Policy for his paper
"Order-Maintenance Policing in Baltimore: The Failure of
'Broken Windows' as a Police Strategy." Trettien's paper
questions the efficacy of so-called "zero tolerance"
policing tactics, such as frequent stop-and-frisk searches
and arrests for relatively minor offenses, adopted by city
law enforcement officials in the late 1990s to help curb
more serious crimes. These aggressive policing strategies
grew out of the "broken windows" theory that argues that
low-level social disorder invites more serious offenses.
Zero tolerance policing was credited with lowering
crime rates in New York City in the 1990s and was
subsequently adopted by other cities, including Baltimore.
However, Trettien says, there is little evidence for a
causal link between disorder and most serious crime, and
there are significant costs for individuals, communities
and the cities associated with zero tolerance tactics.
Co-sponsored by the Abell Foundation and the Johns
Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies,
the Abell Award competition is open to full-time
undergraduate and graduate students at Coppin State
University; Goucher College; Johns Hopkins; Loyola College
in Maryland; Morgan State University; Notre Dame College;
Towson University; University of Baltimore; University of
Maryland, Baltimore; UMBC; and the University of Maryland,
College Park. The purpose of the competition is to
encourage students to become more knowledgeable about and
involved in the challenges facing the city.
"This was a very competitive year for the Abell Award,
with more than half of the final submissions coming from
doctoral students," said Sandee Newman, director of the
Institute for Policy Studies and a member of the judging
panel. "Blake's selection is all the more impressive for
being the first time that an undergraduate has won the
competition."
According to Trettien's analysis, Baltimore police
made more than 21,000 warrantless arrests in 2004. Data for
stop-and-frisk searches is less reliable, but the annual
number may exceed 150,000, according to the paper. The
direct cost to the city in wages for law enforcement
personnel and processing and housing of arrestees runs into
the millions of dollars, Trettien says. In addition,
warrantless arrests add considerable stress to the already
overburdened court system. Moreover, these aggressive
practices have been found to undermine communities' trust
in law enforcement and therefore the effectiveness of
police officers. And individuals arrested under zero
tolerance practices — even those who are released
without charges — retain an arrest record that can
significantly damage their employment prospects.
Trettien's paper proposes several adjustments to
Baltimore's present zero tolerance policy: alternatives to
arrest, such as citations for disorderly behavior and other
minor offenses; harm-reduction strategies, such as
automatic expungement of arrest records when charges aren't
filed; and community policing, in which communities and law
enforcement officials work jointly to identify and work
with troublemakers.
Trettien, an economics and political science major,
says that his interest in the topic was sparked by comments
from fellow students about "heavy-handed" police tactics
for relatively minor infractions. Delving a little deeper,
he encountered a highly polarized political debate played
out in the media and public forums — but no solid
evidence to support the partisan rhetoric. "You had people
who felt strongly on both sides of the issue, but where was
the evidence behind it?" he asks.
Trettien will receive $5,000 for his winning paper. In
addition, the paper will be circulated to relevant
Baltimore policy-makers and opinion leaders and posted on
the IPS and Abell Foundation Web sites
(www.jhu.edu/ips and
www.abell.org).
At Hopkins, Trettien has served as president of the
JHU chapter of the ACLU and was co-founder of a community
association representing students living off campus. He
graduates this week with university and departmental honors
and plans to apply to law school with the goal of pursuing
a career in public interest law and public policy.
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