What to do about Washington Square?

National Review, Nov 10, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

In New York, Washington Square Park is in the news. It is election season and Mayor Giuliani has promised to drop the Hiroshima bomb on drugs, and the park is one of his targets. As described by Michael Cooper of the New York Times, "These days the park has been a haven for skate punks, folk singers, buskers, and bikers, a draw for tourists looking for the unusual, and, much to the chagrin of the police and neighbors, a drug bazaar."

The question the police are searching for the answer to is how to stop the recurrent miscreant. It is on the order of the prostitute who is picked up Monday, released Tuesday, and picked up again the following Monday. "Each time, law-enforcement officials said, drug dealers returned to the park as soon as they had made their way through the criminal-justice system. One man was arrested for selling drugs there this summer for the 76th time, the police said."

The world has bemoaned turnstile justice for a very long time, and public protests have had an effect on serious crime. The downward turn in heavy crime is in part attributable to the longer sentences being given to those who kill and maim and plunder. What to do about other criminals (lesser criminals isn't quite the way to put it) is, so to speak, in the public domain's thinking tank.

What has got heavy publicity in recent months is Megan's Law. It is the law that seeks to identify a child abuser who is released from prison. What it says is that notice can be given that Molester John, having been released from prison, has taken up residence at 4 West Side Drive, Asbury Park, New Jersey. The intention is obvious: to alert people with children who live at 2 West Side Drive, Asbury Park, New Jersey, what their new neighbor was doing before he came to town, serving time for child molestation.

Now the up-in-arms types are upset over this arrangement, and not without reason. What they say is that when a man is released from prison he has paid his debt to society and should be allowed to come back into society as repristinated as he is when he leaves a confessional and re-enters his congregation, shriven of sin. The Megan's Law people say, Oh no. The sex offender has revealed a disposition which is not extinguished by five years in prison. It isn't like getting a driver's license. Up until then you may be required by laws in different states to post a huge banner above your rear bumper: STUDENT DRIVER. When you get your license, the sign is removed. But there is no equivalent for a man whose genes crave pedophilic satisfaction: the only thing such a man can do is exercise self-discipline. But his neighbors can't know whether he succeeds, and don't want to rely on his having done so.

Presumably the way out of that tangle is to write into laws affecting child molesters that their penalty is in two parts. First the jail sentence, and then the public identification in the community -- for however many years science tells us the libido rages. But this does not tell us how to deal with the prostitute or, in the case of Washington Square, the marijuana vendor.

But we are told what they are thinking. "In my generation," Joan Dankovich, an area resident, is quoted, "there's hardly anyone who didn't try pot and they're not all criminals."

Miss Dankovich also asked how the new policy would be enforced. "Will people wear tags on their heads saying they've been arrested?"

It transpires that that, or rather something like that, is exactly what some people are thinking about. "Since last spring police commanders have been discussing how to put such a policy into effect. At one debate, several commanders suggested giving parolees identifying bracelets to let police officers know that they had been arrested in the park. The suggestion was shot down as a violation of individual rights," a police official (speaking anonymously) said.

In the matter of marijuana, the problem is very nearly insurmountable. If half of late teenagers are going to experiment with marijuana and the purchase of it is illegal, then Washington Square is going to lure the purveyor to do it again the 77th time. The alternatives are apparently ruled out. One alternative is to send him to prison for 25 years. There's some incongruity in that option that causes the society to say, No: That's overdoing it.

The other alternative is also frowned on, which is to license the sale of pot under strictly supervised conditions, like the sale of beer. One wonders what residents in the area of Washington Square would tell us if asked that question.