Strategies for Controlling/Regulating Graffiti

There appear to be two basic approaches taken by Washington cities to regulate and control graffiti. One approach is aimed at the "graffiti artists" or "taggers" and makes it a crime to damage or deface public or private property. Of course, to be effective this approach requires that police officers must actually catch a tagger in the act. These types of ordinances have been on the books for a long time and, while necessary to have in place, they have not proven to be particularly effective at deterring many graffiti artists.

A new approach being tried by some cities is aimed at getting the graffiti removed as soon as possible, the theory being that quick removal will deny the graffiti artists any time to admire their work and therefore remove, or at least reduce, their incentive to do it in the first place. On public property this means some sort of active monitoring program and the use of either city crews or volunteers to wash walls and paint over the graffiti. This may work fine on public property but how do you deal with graffiti on private property? The answer to that in some cities has been to regulate it as a public nuisance and to require removal by the property owner.

Other Strategies

Redmond's innovative approach involves the construction of a legal graffiti wall where taggers are invited to do their thing on a designated display wall, the hope being that they will be less inclined to paint somewhere else.

Pasco has a particularly effective graffiti abatement program which involves the enlistment of juvenile offenders doing community service work to remove graffiti within 48 hours.

Some cities in other states have gone so far as to prohibit the sale of spray paint to minors in an attempt to cut off the supply of paint to the graffiti artists.

St. Paul, Minnesota has found a way to use the Internet to help control graffiti. Their Web site has a place for citizens to report graffiti on public or private property.