...as you might expect, a policy turn undertaken during a period of emergency will eventually produce diminishing returns - as Steven Levitt puts it, "the two-millionth criminal imprisoned is likely to impose a much smaller crime burden on society than the first prisoner" - even as it imposes substantial moral costs. And precisely because the tough-on-crime approach was largely vindicated by events, it's extremely difficult for elected officials to walk back from some of the dubious practices that have grown up around it - like, say, the possibly cruel-and-unusual use of long-term solitary confinement.I'm less certain that the "tough on crime" approach has been "largely vindicated" by events--mostly because I think a large part of the events include the moral costs, and the real costs to communities where alarming numbers of men are under the watch of the state. One should consider the numbers here--blacks make up a third of all drug arrests, and black men are 12 times as likely to be imprisoned on a drug conviction. Four in Five of these arrests were for possession, not sale. Perhaps this is because the drug epidemic has run rampant through black communities, but probably not. The difference in illicit drug usage is slight (9.5 percent of blacks have used illicit substances, 8.2% of whites). Those are the sort of numbers that feed an intense distrust of the justice system in many black communities. I think Ross (though I can't be sure) sees the ends justifying the means. But the means are disproportionately born by people who live far away from those "Nixon to China" conservatives.
This political dynamic explains why the chances for effective prison reform probably depend on Nixon-to-China conservatives, who can put the credibility the Right has built up on law and order to good use. (It wouldn't hurt if conservatives were willing to champion some alternative approaches to crime reduction as well.) But they probably also depend on crime rates staying flat, or falling - and in the current downturn that may be too much to hope for.
This is more than theory for me. Ten years ago, my college friend Prince Jones was followed by a cop from Prince George's county Maryland, into the District, and out into the suburbs of Virginia, where he was going to see his young daughter and girlfriend. The police officer was allegedly looking for a drug dealer--a short man with long dreads. Prince was about 6'3 and wore a low caesar. The officer and Prince ended up in a confrontation, merely yards away from the home of Prince's girlfriend. He produced no badge, just a gun and a claim that he was a cop. Prince didn't believe him (and without a badge, I wouldn't have either) and rammed the guy's car. The cop shot Prince eight times, killing him.
Prince was not from the inner-city. His mother was a radiologist. He was a fitness freak. He was a born-again Christian who tried to convert me whenever I saw him. He was a student at Howard, who was killed mere yards from the home of his baby. The only thing he shared in common with the drug-dealer the cops were seeking out was color. Despite a botched operation, that spanned three jurisdictions, and resulted in the death of an innocent man, and orphaned a girl who will have no memories of her father, the officer was neither prosecuted, nor bounced off the force.
I don't bring this out to be cheap or try to shame my colleague, but to say that when you live close to that line, when you've been stopped by the police several times, when you know innocent people who are dead, when you know kids who are coming up fatherless because of our obsession with drugs, it becomes difficult to say that events have vindicated our strategy. Cases like Prince's wear on an essential thread in our democracy--a belief that the people who are charged with protecting you, actually care about protecting you. We've paid a heavy price for our crime policy. I'm heartened that some conservatives are starting to see that.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Kudos.
Ross often sees the world from the perspective of a gated community.
Ross always sees the world from the perspective of a gated community.
There. Fixed it for you.
That really sums it up, and until conservatives acknowledge that part of it, we won't move toward a solution. And I'd bet real money that even most well-meaning liberals don't realize that the disparity is that bad.
The falling crime rate was as much about shifting demographics as anything else; and the shift in demographics is as much about birth control as anything else.
The Committee on Understanding Crime Rates' 2008-Workshop Report seems to indicate that the most valuable answer to the question why crime rates have fallen is: One doesn't know for sure. The shift in democraphics is certainly a factor, but "producing less young men" is not exactly an attractive political platfrom to run with, of course.
However, from a European perspective, an incarceration rate of 1/100 adults seems to be a failure per se. Not exactly a result that would help you bulid up much Crime Policy-credibility.
I dont' agree with the drug war, whatever benefits we get from keeping a couple of kids off of weed for a few years aren't worth the waste of resources or imposition on our freedoms. However, I have long thought that using the numbers for possession vs sale aren't exactly useful. It doesn't factor in that prosecutors will plead down a sale charge to a possession plea. Also, someone arrested for possession could be a seller, however there is not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for a sale or delivery conviction. It is as if we were to label Al Capone a simple tax cheat as opposed to a mobster.
I have read similar things to what Tony mentioned about demographics, and relating it not only to birth control but to abortion as well. Though I have a gut feeling that locking up repeat offenders for a lot longer than we used to probably has something to do with it as well. This is not simply a right wing talking point, the late Ann Richards was a strong proponent of this as well.
I don't know how to tell you this, and I don't want to hurt your feelings, but abortion is a form of birth control; and in fact, up until the advent and legalization of contraception, abortion and infanticide where the most common forms of family planning.
Short sidebar here. I see your clinical point but I think there may be a qualifier there. Abortion is a form of last resort of birth control. Same as applied to how common abortion as birth control was before wide availability of contraception. Common among what group? I don't even know how to address infanticide as family planning.
I don't know how to tell you this, and I don't want to hurt your feelings Tony, but abortion is NOT a form of birth control. Birth control is a method used to prevent pregnancy. An abortion is a way to end an unwanted pregnancy. The difference is an important one and vital to shutting down conservatives and christian freaks who think women are using abortion as a regular method of birth control and thus attempting to invalidate or justify their (the religious nuts) psychotic ramblings and actions. Sorry for the hijack, but I could not let that "abortion as a form of birth control" thing go. That is dangerous language my friend.
You aren't hurting my feeling by saying that. I was just under the assumption that you meant the advent of the pill rather than the Rowe vs. Wade decision.
I know your feelings we're going to get hurt. WIRE ref.; second season. ;-)
This might be the wrong blog to make this confession on, but I have never seen The Wire.
Ross also considers having the highest rate of incarceration in the world an acceptable cost.
The conservative argument has been that costs associated with drug-crime and domestic troubles are higher than the costs created by the prohibition. This is of course circular logic and does not make sense at all. I hope we can one day distinguish between somebody drinking a glass of wine and somebody killing somebody while drunk or to get drunk.
From an libertarian perspective - one has the right to do with ones body whatever one pleases as long as it does not harm others. In other words - how we derive something might not be a personal choice - just how we consume it. In this context - I find that consuming animal products legally more questionable than consuming drugs illegally. Of course - one can consume illegal drugs in a bad way if one buys them from a violent gang. But consuming legal factory-farmed meat is guaranteed and institutionalized abuse...
It is time to separate consumption and production from a legal point of view.
Brother Coates -
Your thoughts on this are generally on point. I would go further, however, and announce that rather being a particular issue with Conservatism vs (choose your political ideology), it is the "always already present" issue of the prevailing white culture seeing blacks not as a part of (even if only a subset) their experience, but as an altogether foreign entity. I believe the vast majority of whites are burdened by this inability to rationalize the state of the black community as being necessarily a component of the larger American community/culture/discourse.
In short, the war on crime/drugs is nothing more than a social science experiment. And in the case of science experiments, one does not empathize with the lab rats...
(sorry for the generalizations... I'm just getting tired of all of the smart people refusing to get to the point)
I don't agree with you about the war on drugs being seen as a social science experiment. I believe people that have pushed those policies see it as a experiment. And I don't believe most of them see Black people as subjects of social experimentation.
I do agree with you though that non-Black communities -not just Whites but everybody other community, too-- tend to see the Black comm. as a foreign entity, and so, their problems, struggles etc as their not our problems. This includes liberal, too. In South Florida sometimes I see the word "American" as meaning "Anglo-White." I would venture and say that I sometimes feel as if the Black community sometimes see itself as an foreign entity in America. In all cases I am talking about something that is subconscious. This is a big problem and affect every community as so many common sense policies have trouble passing because it is "their" problem, not just crime but education, health care, etc. etc.
I guess I would admit that "they" (those that have advanced these drug/crime policies) may honestly not view Blacks as subjects of social experimentation. I can agree with your point there. But, here we are discussing a body of evidence that suggest that for decades, and across all measures of success and viability, these programs (experiments) have not only failed, but have had a disastrous impact upon these communities.
To extrapolate our shared view that the Black community is seen as foreign (even by those within it - I'll agree with you there too), how are these policies, with their attendent economic and moral costs, continued?
One point I will disagree with - I don't equate this lack of empathy with "subconscious" action. Not caring, by choice or inability, in this case stems from an active (willful) refusal to critique one's surrounding environment. This is why I made the sincere apology for my generalization. Many people (many whites) have exhibited the courage to challenge prevailing thought within the larger discourse. Far too many have not.
I don't equate this lack of empathy with "subconscious" action. Not caring, by choice or inability, in this case stems from an active (willful) refusal to critique one's surrounding environment
Uhmmm... you are right. I also think that many people get a kick out of "theming" other groups not realizing that indirectly --and sometimes not so indirectly-- they are f__ing up themselves.
Ta-Nehisi, you are right on, but I don't think you need to implicitly concede to Ross that there was a correlation between increased incarceration and falling crime rates during that period of American history. Ross has bought into a pernicious conservative narrative about the causes and effects of the spike in crime during the '60s that just isn't borne out by the sociological or historical data. There just isn't a lot of evidence that "tough on crime" policies (mandatory minimums, longer and longer sentences for nonviolent offenses, three strikes laws) actually "worked" to decrease crime levels, especially since the widespread use of many of these actually postdated the "crime wave" and started to become ubiquitous as crime levels were actually decreasing.
There's also a correlation between abortion and falling crime rates, according to the authors of "Freakonimics." But I don't think Ross wants to promote more abortions as a form of crime fighting.
Just because something works, as he would point out, doesn't mean it's just; and it doesn't mean that more of it is better.
I wish I could plaster "correlation does not imply causality" all over the internet. It just doesn't, as any cursory study of statistics will drill into your head. TNC isn't conceding anything by agreeing that there has been a correlation; that is a question of fact.
Things get interesting when someone tries to take two trends that occurred over the same time period (a correlation) and attempt to say that one caused the other, as Ross is doing. It's wrong, and virtually impossible to prove one way or the other, given the vast amount of policies created, not to mention demographic/cultural/economic changes. It's when people try to make the claim that a correlation necessarily implies a cause that they need to be challenged. Their argument is seldom based on anything other than their own preconceptions about "how the world works."
To be fair, Ross Douthat doesn't mix up correlation with causality, stating:
The key word here is "incapacitation", meaning the potential criminals didn't commit crimes because they were locked up. I wouldn't say this can't have an effect on the statistics on short-term. Imprison your young men and crimes might drop. But what does that say about your society? Isn't having your young men out of prison an end in itself?And on that logic, what happens when you release young men after they've been locked up with real criminals for a few years?
I read Ross blog yesterday including the links. What this article it brought to mind was the Military Industrial Complex, now we have the Prison Industrial Complex. It cost America an average of $50,000.00 dollars a year to keep a prisoner.... For every four prisoner they hire one guard. Can you say recession proof industry. South Carolina has 24 Prisons and 4 major College Universities. America pays more to keep Non-Violent criminals in jails than it pays the average American worker. Does our "racial" fears justify the means? Is this really worth the cost now when our country is debt?
I am going to be just a tad bit contrarian here and say while the "tough on crime" approach has not been necessarily vindicated, there is the perception by many people across many different ideological bents that at least some of the "tough on crime" tactics are the reasons for falling crime and murder rates. There are other parts of Ross's post that I don't agree with but there is a lot of truth in the post also.
Whether we like it or not Republicans/Conservatives at this point in history are more likely to have the political cover to initiate prison reforms than Democrats/Liberals. Thats because perception has become reality to a lot of people. You could see an analagous situation last night when President Obama talked about cutting Defense spending and reforming the procurement process. In the midst of answering the question what did he do? He pointed out that John McCain agreed with him on the issue. He did that to build up credibility on the issue and its telling that he used a Republican as his first choice to put out there to show that what he wants to do isn't some kind of scheme to make our military weaker. Now a lot of this is Democrats/Liberals own faults for not standing up and explaining exactly why we hold certain beliefs about the criminal justice system and instead letting Republicans/Conservatives frame the debate when it comes to fighting crime or being committed to National Security.
Just the other day Bill Richardson repealed the death penalty in New Mexico and that was a big deal. But in almost every interview given just before and just after he repealed the death penalty he still claimed that he had misgivings about doing so and tried to offer the inference that he personally believed in the death penalty. It almost came off to me that he was apologizing for doing something that instead he should have been proud enough to justify and explain to any and all comers. The fact that minorities get sentenced to the death penalty at disproportionate numbers to their white counterparts charged with the same crime is a FACT not an opinion. That is a definite flaw in the system, but instead of focusing on that fact Richardson made it seem like he wasn't convinced but was just making the move to error on the side of caution. Had that been Gov Rick Perry in Texas repealing the death penalty nobody would have as much as batted an eye. He wouldn't have had to do any explaining and because of perception people would have just assumed he MUST have had a good reason for doing so.
Look at how former mayor Rudy Gulliani was deified for "cleaning up" New York City. Nobody focuses on the numerous charges of police brutality and instances of police killing unarmed minorities. No its all about the results and the results supposedly show that he did everything right because the crime rate came down. Its a shitty reality but it IS reality all the same. Until Democrats are willing to try to reframe the tough on crime argument and own it this perception will continue to be the reality of many many Americans unfortunately.
I got to disagree with you on the tough on crime approach - not only does it essentially turn out to be tough on black people, but it also is a bootleg kind of argument. I mean, the reality is that in the US there haven't been effective measures to counteract crime and the things that lead to them. If you look at the system, you realize that it's the same model for the past 140 years. Going back to the Parchman Farm things have not changed. Americans might believe this is a working situation, but it's primarily because they read the recidivism numbers as a product of the inherent criminality of the incarcerated, instead of as a result of a system that largely exacerbates existing problems.
You can take it to the juvenile justice front. Despite evidence showing that alternative means of treatment are more effective and cost efficient, across the country as the budgets tighten, the lock em and cuff approach is being reinforced. The thing about what Ross wrote is that it wasn't at all nuanced, it didn't explore the alternatives and it wasn't aimed at creating discussion around things that might be working. This technique is another way of framing the discussion so that your answer seems to be the only one. I think you did the same thing, though I don't think it was intentional, as much as, most of us don't have access to the information about these issues and the alternatives. The Annie Casey Foundation does great work around this and so does the Campaign for Youth Justice - although they both focus on the juvenile system they use fact and result based research that is verifiable.
Even if it's true that the "tough on crime" approach doesn't lead greater crime reduction (leaving other outcomes aside), the fact that dropping crime rates and that approach were coincident creates a connection in peoples' minds. Owing to that perception across a substantial swathe of the electorate (as evinced by the discrepancy between how many polls push tough on crime policies vs. the number of those pursuing reform) Ross' point about the political difficulty of backing away from it is largely correct.
I thick our current system of mass incarceration is a horrendous waste and an absolute moral travesty, but recognizing the challenges to reforming it isn't the same as condoning it.
I hope Ross responds to this. The back-and-forth between he and TNC over family and social conservatism was a model of what left-right debate ought to be.
TNC, that is a truly tragic story about your friend. How did that not get prosecuted? Did the cop lie and the grand jury believed the cop, or did it never get to a grand jury? WTF?
first time poster here. ta-nehisi -- i just wanted to comment on the tragedy of prince jones. i lived in dc for many years, and was in the area when prince was bascialy executed. i was stunned that the cop, who recklessly and illegally pursued your friend through 3 jurisdictions, was never charged with any wrongdoing at all.
i am a recovering alcoholic and have watched with horror over the years as a medical and social problem (addiction) has become criminalized -- and yes, there is an unjust, purposeful focus on the black community.
i would like to see and end to the mindless "war on drugs" which does nothing but claim many lives that could have been helped with medical intervention.
There's a means/ends issue here. Even if it was demonstrably true that our current crime policies had significantly lowered the crime rate, the benefits have to be weighed against the true costs.
The crime rate would drop pretty low if, for example, the US incarcerated every single individual from their 14th birthday until their 30th. Crying 'But look how safe we are!' wouldn't remotely justify the moral or economic costs of such an arrangement.
Imprisoning 1 percent of your citizens, disproportionately those of an already marginalized majority, can't be justified no matter how low the crime rate is.
More anecdotally, my mom always tells the story of her black dental receptionist, who one day realized she had left her driver's license at home and made her husband take the afternoon off work to pick it up and drive it to the dental office for her. My mom would have just driven home licence-less, and tried to explain her mistake to the police officer if she got pulled over. But the receptionist was *terrified* of being pulled over without a license.
Not as dramatic a story as TNC's, but somewhat of a wakeup call to a suburban white kid who grew up taking for granted that the cops were more or less on the same team as him.
The other thing I have with "Well it worked didn't it?" coming from Douchat is that he makes quite a spectacle of his Christianity. Yet over and over again in his opinions about this or that, he seems utterly oblivious to Jesus most profound sermon: love thy neighbor as thyself. He speaks from within a theoretical world of his own construction with apparent obliviousness to the reality of the flesh and blood lives about which he opines.
I am not a fan, and thus not particularly familiar with his writing. But sometimes it seems as if greatest horror he has experienced is being subject to the amorous advances of a chubby co-ed; and for all his intellectual imagination, he reads like a savant with a gift of rhetoric, but with no emotional curiosity, let alone empathy.
"Well it worked, didn't it?"
It certainly worked for me. Where I live I leave my house unlocked and the key in the ignition of my car, and it's lovely. But I don't confuse my experience with being the typical experience, and I try to remember another bit of wisdom from Douchat's guru:
"Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
From Forbes Magazine:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0424/034.html--
"Some states have turned to for-profit firms to run their prisons. But these private firms quickly get addicted to the government cash. They, too, have poor rehabilitation rates and spend their time lobbying state legislatures for tougher laws and longer sentences.
If you want to take on a big, failing, self-dealing bureaucracy that succeeds (and grows) by betraying the public interest, don't focus on the welfare system. Deal with the prison system. California spends $7.4 billion a year on prisons, more than on all its four-year colleges and universities combined. Nearly a dime out of every state dollar goes into California prisons, which house 170,000 inmates. What return do Californians get on their investment? An alarming 57% recidivism rate.
How can we justify continuing to spend $40,000 to $100,000 annually per inmate in neighborhoods where we spend less than $9,000 per pupil?"
And this article does not substantially take on the "free labor" aspect of some prison industries in other states discussed in the first paragraph above. As with so much conservative mind think, the front ideology masks a reality that is institutionally classist and racist, and universally bankrupting morally and economically.
And that's what I tell my white friends, when I see cops get off for killing innocent black men. It's a tragedy, etc. But this is all a jury predisposed to cops (white? suburban?) needs for a not guilty verdict. Me and my son have to bear that burden for others. We can be legally murdered "by accident" or "out of fear for one's life" by the police. It's harsh to say. And I got heat for putting that way. But that's real. I merely had to list the newspaper accounts for recent happenings for proof. Stuff that happened to me and mine was thankfully was non-fatal so the examples were not as compelling.
I think there is a distinction that could be made between the vindication of a get tough on crime policy and a vindiciation of the drug policy.
I think they are related in our minds, but separate in reality. The get tough approach on violent crime really does seem to be a success--violent crime was way down after the shift in punishing philosophy in the 1980s.
The adoption of that same approach to low level drug crimes, however, seems disproportionate if not downright crazy. And it furthermore it seems very unsuccessful in dramatically lowering the amount of drugs available.
Part of the problem with this discussion is the word "conservatives".
The saner, libertarian conservatives of the Goldwaterian variety might suggest changes in criminal justice policy and ending the "drug war", but the "Christianist" moralist base of the party would oppose it. Just like they want to regulate or prohibit various forms of sexual expression that offend them.
I'm old enough to remember the beginnings of the "broken windows" theory of policing.
These discussions have been going on for 25 years+. Calling anything a "war" outside of an actual war is stupid. "The War on Fat". "The War on Poverty". "The War on the Use of the Term War".
When guys like George Schultz and the late William F Buckley suggest legalizing or decriminalizing drug use the country needs to listen.
When you look at the problems caused by the drug war in Mexico the true blame lies not with the Mexican government, but with the United States government and the voracious appetite of the American people for drugs. Legalize drugs, regulate and tax the sale, and treat it like a public health problem.
There is a debate going on in the Illinois legislature about legalizing medical marijuana. The arguments being made against it by the law enforcement community and the moralist community are both wrong and laughable.
I'm going to grab a drink now. Thankfully that is still legal.
Wish I would have jumped in on this discussion before...
I've commented before on the topic of prison reform, and while I agree generally with the sentiment primarily voiced here against the "war on drugs", I think that it tends to be oversimplified in the comments.
As a previous commenter noted, plea bargains skew the statistics on the drug possession versus drug dealing charges. I'm a therapist in a medium-security prison and have worked with lots of guys down on drug cases. I think the notion that there are a lot of guys locked up on drug possession cases who were just drug addicts is false. I would say, anecdotally speaking, that most of the guys I work with that have drug cases were dealing. Often they were dealing to support their own habit, but nevertheless...
What is more common with the addicts is that they get arrested for theft, residential entry, battery, etc. That list includes violent and non-violent offenses.
The whole criminal justice/corrections system handling of drugs is a mess. I agree with the majority of what is said here about it, but I think we need to realize that the diagnosis of the problem is not as simple as it often is portrayed here.
Honestly TNC, I think you'd be perfectly justified, and probably doing a public service, to publicize the name of the police officer who did this.
Carlton Jones was the cop- I googled the story. The prosecutor's office threw out every criminal case where he was a key witness, saying he was not credible. The family got a 3.5 million dollar civil verdict but no criminal case was ever brought. The cop is apparently now doing desk work of some sort. Prosecutors can't bring a criminal case unless they think there is enough hard evidence for a conviction, which can be difficult, and maybe they really couldn't get the necessary evidence for a criminal conviction on this. But it is clear that this dude should have been FIRED, not sent to do desk work. If I "accidentally" killed an innocent person while doing my job, it resulted in $3.5 million loss to my employer, and it became so well known that I was a liar that the people relying on me at work had to throw out every project I had ever touched, I know for damn sure they wouldn't just assign me to a different division. This is insane.
I found this in the WaPo, a more recent article than the one I read previously. Maybe it's worth mentioning that the cop was also african american- it shouldn't matter, but for whatever reason it's not what I thought when I first heard the story.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062001058.html
Maybe one of the reasons why conservatives have so much more credibility on crime is the need for liberals to frame it as a racial issue. Of course disparities in enforcement and sentencing exist, but most of the American public doesn't believe that this is because of racism in the law itself, not just the biases of cops, jurors, and judges. There isn't a feasible policy that can deal with the latter.
I would argue that this racial view of crime is what feeds black distrust of the criminal justice system. This is in irrational distrust, in my view, to the extent that it causes ordinary people to celebrate the murder of police officers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22oakland.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=oakland%20police&st=cse
Criminals are a blight on any community, black or white. Most victims are the same race as the perpetrators. Identifying and punishing police misconduct is certainly necessary, but fostering an us-vs.-them mentality towards law enforcement is unhealthy and self-defeating. I don't think there are many people in the inner city who long for a return to the 80's.
Prince Jones was a high school classmate of mine. Anyone who had any contact with him at all knew the idea that he was some drug dealer who needed to be followed across state lines was patently absurd. Whatever the situation, if a suspect represents such a high risk to the public that following him across jurisdictions is justified, then his detention warrants setting up a roadblock or at least capturing him with a team of police officers, not a lone officer.
Unfortunately, this type of police behavior is not unusual. The Agitator reports enough incidents to make me perpetually angry. If Prince was Douthat's friend, he'd probably have a different attitude.
The silver lining, though terribly thin, is that Prince's death offended every one who ever knew him. There are a lot of non-black people who now know, in an undeniable way, that this bullshit exists and it stinks something fierce. It's easy to remain unaware of stuff like this -- we have our lives with spouses, kids, jobs, etc. But when you hear that someone you liked and respected, someone you know is fundamentally good, is killed for no good reason and no one is held accountable for it, anger ensues. Hopefully that anger is the seed of change and we start cleaning some of this shit up.
Mr. C.
The day before yesterday, you had a post about the wealth gap. Today you had an interesting post about the war on crime/drugs. It seems to me that these two issues are related. In America we seem to lock people up for comitting crimes rather than pay attention to the poverty that leads to crime.
On a side note it seems to me that the war on drugs is misdirected. I grew up on a dry reservation, and people drank lysol/aquanet hairspay to get high. No amount of legislation will change people's behavior, however if the poverty that causes such conditions is dealt with it seems that people's behavior changes naturally.
Does anyone think that the disparity in the arrest statistics between white and black drug offenders has anything to do with all the drug-related murders that take place in black communities? The imprisonment rate also has a great deal to do with this, since police are trying to get people to roll over on higher-ups.
5-0 be down here about the bodies.
I'm no defender of the police or the drug war, which if anything creates the black market that is the impetus behind a lot of these murders, but you can't expect the drug-related murders to not draw increased police attention to where they take place, which is overwhelmingly in black neighborhoods. That will inevitably lead to a higher arrest rate, and many of those arrests will inevitably be made with the intention of moving up the supply chain, which will make cops/prosecutors far less inclined to cut deals when they are trying to use jail time as a stick to elicit information on criminals involved in serious violence.
I'm a conservative in that I am 'tough on crime' and I believe that crimes against society must be punished severely.
However, as a conservative, I believe that the worst capital crimes are committed by those who betray the trust of the society and the state.
A conservative's reason for a lightly-policed society: there are fewer opportunities for the kind of socially-corrosive corruption that (inevitably) arises because it is so difficult to "watch the watchers."
But this is the reasoning of a conservative who, in essence, believes in the doctrine of original sin.