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First many of those crime cartels could not exist without the banning of drugs, prostitution and gambling. The same goes for violent crimes in general. Large nu
by nickik 11y ago
First many of those crime cartels could not exist without the banning of drugs, prostitution and gambling. The same goes for violent crimes in general. Large numbers of violent crimes are done by people involved in drug dealing or consuming. If drugs were legal you would not put so many people in these situations.
Falling crime rates is happing all over the first world. Most countries have know-where near the policy infrastructure that the US has. So thats probably not a very good expiation.
Nobody says that their is no real crime. In all the speech by the state its sounds as if we are getting rolled over by a totally new wave of terror and crime while in reality its the exact opposite. What bother so many is that they underline all their arguments with this false impression.
- tptacek 11y agoPossible, but unlikely. According to a recent study, the majority of offenders are sentenced for violent offenses, and the majority of those sentenced for violent offenses have never been convicted of a drug crime.
- nickik 11y agoIts tricky to say, seems to me that prior conviction is not a very good metric. However I don't know any better way to figure this out either.
- tptacek 11y agoYou can take the analysis further and observe, as that study did, that the set of people incarcerated for violent offenses is almost entirely disjoint from the set of people incarcerated for drug offenses. There is very little overlap, not just in the current prison population but over time as well. We should end the war on drugs, of course, but we more urgently need to end what Ta-Nahisi Coates calls "the carceral state", and that will require much stiffer medicine than drug legalization.
- mineshaftgap 11y agohttp://www.theatlantic.com/notes/all/2015/09/debating-mass-incarceration/405694/ http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/all/2015/09/debating-mass-i...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago>According to a recent study Please post the study.
- likpok 11y agoIt's not exactly "recent", but http://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop1.pdf http://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop... is what I presume 'tptacek is talking about (it was discussed on HN before).
- rayiner 11y ago> First many of those crime cartels could not exist without the banning of drugs, prostitution and gambling. That doesn't mean that it's an "invented crime." It's undeniable that drugs, gambling, and prostitution have real social costs and harms. The people are entitled to regulate commerce in their society generally, but trade in harmful things especially. When people uses organized violence to circumvent that regulation, in the pursuit of profit, that is actual crime, not invented crime. > Large numbers of violent crimes are done by people involved in drug dealing or consuming. You're presupposing a direction of causation here. Your average street gang does not exist because of drug dealing or consumption (and indeed, violent street gangs long predate any restrictions on drugs or alcohol). They deal in drugs because it's easy money, but arise for other reasons.
- tomp 11y ago> It's undeniable that drugs, gambling, and prostitution have real social costs and harms So does banking and the police. Or firearms and alcohol. Both are regulated, but not outlawed.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoHeck so does "pursuing happiness". Skiing accidents. Bankruptcy when your art studio goes under. Smoking. Pretty much anything fun. As a country, the USA is actually constituted to allow these things. Because, individual freedoms. And inalienable rights. I hear somebody want to crack down on something, I think "There goes somebody who forgot what it means to be American"
- jljljl 11y agoBeing pedantic: pursuit of happiness and inalienable rights are in the Declaration of Independence, not the constitution. The right to regulate interstate commerce (and thus put restrictions on a lot of the fun things) is enumerated.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago