Last month, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was arrested by school safety officers and led out of her Queens, N.Y., middle school in handcuffs. Gonzalez was escorted to a nearby police station, where she was held in custody for several hours until finally being released to her mother, Moraima Comacho.

The 12-year-old’s offense? Gonzalez was caught by her Spanish teacher doodling the words “I love my friends Abby and Faith,” and “Lex was here 2/1/10,” on her desk. Gonzalez now claims that the marker she used wasn’t permanent and that she could have cleaned it up. Unfortunately for Gonzalez, her school has a zero-tolerance policy for graffiti. After being arrested, she was suspended from school.

The suspension has since been revoked. But Gonzalez still has to complete eight hours of community service and write an essay on what she learned from the experience. It’s probably safe to say she won’t soon forget being led out of her school in handcuffs in front of her friends, or being forced to sit in a police station for several hours. According to Gonzalez, she cried “a lot.”

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of New York filed a suit against the City of New York on behalf of more than 20 plaintiffs who allege wrongful arrest or improper conduct on the part of school safety officers similar to that of the Gonzalez case. It is the ACLU’s contention that these instances represent a troubling and dangerous trend of excessive force on the part of school officials and safety officers when dealing with minor infractions, many of which are the result of similar zero-tolerance policies.

Zero-tolerance policies are an interesting concept. If you try hard enough, you might be able to think back to when the word “tolerance” held positive connotations. Tolerance, like forgiveness and rationality, is meant to be a good thing. The problem with zero-tolerance policies is that some things ought to be tolerated: namely, the innocent desk doodles of 12-year-old middle school students.

School zero-tolerance policies originated as deterrents primarily for drug abuse and violence. Over the past couple of decades, schools officials have expanded the concept to include offenses as minor as cell phone use on campus and possession of fingernail clippers. In order to win reelection or to appease vocal and angry parents, school board members and officials are often inclined to escalate their hardened stances on crime in school in order not to appear “soft on crime.”

All this said, zero-tolerance policies in schools have received a lot of criticism and have been repealed in many school districts across the country. It usually takes an example of gross abuse of force like Gonzalez’s case to highlight the absurdity of these policies, but sometimes common sense wins out.

There is more cause for concern over zero-tolerance and overly harsh stances on crime outside of schools. Like school board members, elected officials at every level of government are at risk for this escalation syndrome. No politician, Democrat or Republican, wants to be labeled “soft on crime.” In order to distinguish themselves from opponents and past officeholders, elected officials have to continually advocate harsher penalties for criminal offenses, particularly sex and drug offenses. This trend creates a sort of crime-and-punishment ratchet effect, where officials must keep “tightening” the ratchet. The appearance of any loosening would carry the risk of angering voters and losing reelection. Often, officials tolerate less to the detriment of their constituents.

Voters—young and old, black and white, rich and poor—all expect tough stances on convicted sex offenders. No reasonable politician would risk seeming soft on child molesters. However, in many cases the only way for these officials to avoid this appearance are expanding the definition of sex offense and putting more people on state sex offender registries for more reasons.

Take, for instance, sex laws in California. Lawmakers in the state have expanded sex laws to include offenses like public urination. As a result the number of people on the state’s sex offender registry has swelled to include tens of thousands of people. State law mandates that the state monitor all registered sex offenders. Faced with a tremendous budget deficit, monitoring those convicted on minor charges takes away resources better spent on keeping tabs on those individuals who represent serious threats to the public.

Zero-tolerance policies and other over-zealous attempts to appear tough on crime have two serious consequences. First, they can do long-lasting damage to minor offenders. Just as Gonzalez will have to live with the humiliation of being handcuffed and arrested for the rest of her life, so too might a young person have to deal with the permanent stain of a sex offense on their record for a harmless, if lewd, offense like public urination.

Second, and more dangerously, they divert attention and resources from major offenders who might present serious threats to society. We suffer from a fear of crime that has made us fearful of tolerance itself.

Steve Harvey is a junior in Trumbull College.