Zero tolerance polices are almost never a good idea. There should always be some room for human grace and forgiveness, and room for misunderstandings to be worked through and resolved.
Zero tolerance policies give way too much power to people who might cry "wolf" to benefit their own careers.
I am an '04 grad, and there has been some system of second chances for a while. I have a friend that started a year ahead of me who was a "turn back" for an honor violation. The violation was in her first year and they decided she was still adapting to the honor code when it happened. The result was 5 years at West Point where she had an in between rank of Cadet PFC for her second year.
The idea of zero tolerance is a little crazy. Have you ever violated a software license, or streamed something with someone else's account? Those should technically be honor violations, but they aren't prosecuting those. It isn't 100% clear to me where to draw the line.
You don't "measure" zero tolerance. And there's no success here--that is, there's no point at which you say "this problem is solved." You commit to throwing out the bad apples, you throw out the bad apples, and promise to throw out any bad apples as you find them in the future.
This system has a long and defendable track record of encouraging assholes to commit small violations that are not worth suing over, while penalizing those that are considerate of others.
It’s meant to take on the large/multiple offenders; if they get enough complaints about 1 company and after warnings that company doesn’t change, they will fine.
That works on people who are using your system with good intentions.
That does not work on people who are using your system with malicious intentions (and who face zero personal consequences when they get caught again, and again, and again). They don't get rehabilitated, when you tell them which rule you broke[1], they just adjust their malicious use to work around that rule. Rehabilitation is only possible when both parties are operating in good faith, which is why it is done with threat of prison, fines, revocation of parole, etc. It can't be done when the 'rehabilitated' party can just reneg on the agreement with zero consequences.
The point of anti-abuse rules isn't the letter of the rules, it's the intent behind them. 'There's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball' only works in children's fairy tales.
There's a reason why no large firm or financial institution will tell you the why. It's not because they think you have good intentions, and they hate you. It's because they are afraid you have malicious intentions, and they aren't interested in holding your hand as you defraud them.
Of course, people in category one get burnt by this, and then complain on Twitter/FB/HN.
[1] If you want to live in a world where anti-abuse systems tell you which rule you broke, you'll probably need to also live in a world where there are very serious consequences that are - with high consistency - inflicted on people breaking those rules in bad faith. We don't live in that kind of world, things like the CFAA are at the same time, both overly broad and draconian and largely toothless.
3-6 month trial/probation is fairly common. While it does help both sides familiarise with each other, it can't prevent a conflict in the future.
I've dealt with long time (15 years) employees suddenly or gradually going completely nuts - refusing to perform any meaningful task, accusing others of abuse and just playing dirty for months, sometimes years.
It's no fun, I tell you what!
6 months trials are useful but to a point
Right, their system seems to presuppose that if a person does something wrong once they should carry the consequences of that "misconduct" indefinitely. That's awfully pessimistic and depressing to me. Everyone has done something "wrong" at one point or another. Most people learn and grow from those mistakes.
What will a society look like where people aren't free to learn from their mistakes but are instead perpetually held back by them?
Once a customer of the penal system, always a customer. They've worked hard to get their retention / repeat business numbers up this high. Why take that away from them?
I would think it'd be closer to a mast/NJP (non-judicial punishment) where you basically get yelled at, get some sort of grunt duty (cleaning the latrine for a month?), maybe have a note in your file if the CO deems it severe enough.
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