School crime prevention strategies show the difference between governing crime and governing through crime

Two excellent recent features in the NYTimes show case the subtle but important difference between what I call "governing crime," serious efforts to address real crime risks within one's actual domain, and "governing through crime," what amount to, at best, reactive responses to fear of crime that have little actual purchase on the actual risks within one's domain.  Last week Susan Saulny reported on the innovative new strategy being deployed by new Chicago public school's chief Ron Huberman (himself a former cop as well as transit official). Violence is a real threat in at least some Chicago schools, with three deaths this year and over 500 shootings in the past several.  In response, Huberman is reversing the usual focus on excluionary and punitive responses to those at risk of violent behavior, and instead focusing on the 10,000 students most at risk of being victims of violence (they turn out to be largely the same people anyway), targetting them with programming to keep them in school and less exposed to violence.  In Sunday's Times, Ian Urbina reported on the bizarre and sensless "zero tolerance" regime that has flourished in schools across the country in response to Columbine and other spectacular but episodic incidents of school violence.