Serious question, how well has the policy of treating everyone exactly the same to the letter of the law/rule worked for zero tolerance policies?
Seems to me that with zero tolerance policies where there is no individual interpretation of the intent of the rule, too many people are unjustly punished for honest mistakes (e.g., forgetting about having a knife in their vehicle at school) or attempts to do well by someone else (e.g., taking a knife away from someone that was trying to hurt themselves).
That's a fair point, but our opposition to Zero Tolerance stems from the fact that punishment does not account for extenuating circumstances.
Policemen are not judges, nor should they ever be. The problem with Zero Tolerance is that the judges are overly strict. We want policemen to enforce the letter. We want judges to consider the spirit of the law, and interpret it appropriately. Policemen lack the knowledge of the law and lack the time to make these decisions in a rational manner. They are forced to rely on poor heuristics. There is less immediacy to a judge's decision.
So, yes, I think it fair that someone who forgets he has a knife in his car is removed from class pending an evaluation of the situation (with this taking place in a reasonable amount of time). Then I believe it only fair if the evaluation determines that if it was truly accidental, then he return.
Zero tolerance is reasonable if the law or rule itself is reasonable. The reason "zero tolerance" has a bad reputation is that it's usually applied to unreasonable rules. I'm fine with zero tolerance of elementary school children bringing actual firearms to school, but zero tolerance of children pretending a tree branch is a gun is just dumb.
Seems to me that with zero tolerance policies where there is no individual interpretation of the intent of the rule, too many people are unjustly punished for honest mistakes (e.g., forgetting about having a knife in their vehicle at school) or attempts to do well by someone else (e.g., taking a knife away from someone that was trying to hurt themselves).