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You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. And, sure, it's true: people who have committed fully to lives of violent crime are dee

You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. And, sure, it's true: people who have committed fully to lives of violent crime are deeply unlikely to turn around and become model citizens. But: if they don't have an income to support their lives of crime, and if their leaders don't in fact have quite a nice income that the more common criminals can aspire to, there's going to be much less incentive for people who are deciding what they want to be to choose a life of crime. And furthermore: committed, full time violent criminals are not the only people we care about here. People whose lives are impacted by the black market nature of the drug trade include many criminals who may in fact have a job, and do some crime on the side. It also includes people who are drug consumers, not dealers, who would materially benefit from a safer and hopefully cheaper drug habit. And it also includes people whose boyfriends and fathers would not be in jail now, and if a large number of those boyfriends and fathers would not be material help to their girlfriends and children, some number of them would be. Is this it? Is it the only policy that we would need to vanquish poverty and crime in the US? Of course not. But there's a reasonable argument that you can't meaningfully address poverty and crime without addressing the drug war -- that it blocks any other attempt to improve conditions in poor, crime-stricken communities.

rayiner 12y ago
> You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. I'm not. The vast majority of the gang members driving around shooting each other up are not "committed fully to lives of violent crime." But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. The 19 year old who mugs someone in a gang initiation ritual is still a bad person even if you can explain his behavior in socioeconomic terms. > Is it the only policy that we would need to vanquish poverty and crime in the US? Of course not. Obviously the drug war contributes to poverty and crime in the U.S., I'm not denying that. But the comment I originally replied to stated: "Interesting to see an effect of the drug war manifested on a map." As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war. People dramatically overstate how much the drug war contributes to violence in the U.S., because their world views (usually individualist ones), don't grapple well with a world where a meaningful percentage of the population is bad and antisocial. If only the government didn't prosecute this drug war, they say, we wouldn't need these prisons! People would get along! But the data just doesn't support that narrative. Look at this chart of spending on drug control: http://cdn6.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//us-drug-addiction-rate-spending.jpg http://cdn6.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//us-drug-addi..., and cross reference that against the homicide rate chart I referred to earlier. You can clearly see that most of the dramatic increase in homicides between the minimum in the late 1950's and the maximum in the 1980's and 1990's happened by the early 1970's, while drug war spending didn't really start until 1973 and didn't really ramp up by the 1980's. We're not seeing the product of communities ravaged by the drug war. What we're seeing is that the drug war has become the focal point for communities that were already disintegrating before the drug war even started.
- curun1r 12y ago
  > But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. Yes, but how did they get that way? They got that way because they were drawn into that life by older gang members. They see older gang members living a life of relative privilege and they're willing to accept the violence that goes along with it. If you take away the money, those older gang members become much less attractive role models. > As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war. From Wikipedia: "In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million." In that same time period, when the prison population increased over 600%, the US population increased roughly 30%. Unless you've got some other theory for drastically increased incarceration rates, that prison and many others used to house the over 1.5m extra prisoners we have today because of the WoD literally would not exist.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I spent several comments laying out a theory for the increased incarceration rates, supported with charts and graphs. The bottom line is that the increase in incarceration rates is the result of a dramatic spike in crime rates starting in 1960, peaking in the early 1990's, and the public response in the form of harsh sentencing laws in the 1990's (three strikes, mandatory minimums). It's a simple explanation: there are more people in prison because there is more crime, and because the spike in crime caused people to vote (by overwhelming margins, I might add) for harsher sentencing laws. Compare incarceration rates with violent crime rates: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._inca..., http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.jpg http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.j.... You can see that incarceration rates are clearly a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. Violent crime peaked in 1993, at 4.3x the 1960 baseline. Incarceration peaked in 2005, at 4.8x the 1960 baseline. It's not until the late 1990's that incarceration rates catch up with violent crime rates. The popular counterargument is that the increase in crime is itself a result of the social effects of the Drug War, e.g. the impact on kids of fathers being sent to prison for decades on drug charges. But the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1986, and the spike in violent crime rates started in 1960. The slope of the crime increase between 1966 and 1972 is as high as at any time after the drug war really got going in the 1980's, and 80% of the total increase in crime between the 1960 trough and the 1993 peak happened by 1980. It is simply inconsistent with the data to say that the increase in crime since 1960 were anything more than moderately impacted by the Drug War, which didn't really get going until long after crime had already skyrocketed.

rayiner 12y ago

> You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. I'm not. The vast majority of the gang members driving around shooting each other up are not "committed fully to lives of violent crime." But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. The 19 year old who mugs someone in a gang initiation ritual is still a bad person even if you can explain his behavior in socioeconomic terms. > Is it the only policy that we would need to vanquish poverty and crime in the US? Of course not. Obviously the drug war contributes to poverty and crime in the U.S., I'm not denying that. But the comment I originally replied to stated: "Interesting to see an effect of the drug war manifested on a map." As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war. People dramatically overstate how much the drug war contributes to violence in the U.S., because their world views (usually individualist ones), don't grapple well with a world where a meaningful percentage of the population is bad and antisocial. If only the government didn't prosecute this drug war, they say, we wouldn't need these prisons! People would get along! But the data just doesn't support that narrative. Look at this chart of spending on drug control: http://cdn6.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//us-drug-addiction-rate-spending.jpg http://cdn6.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//us-drug-addi..., and cross reference that against the homicide rate chart I referred to earlier. You can clearly see that most of the dramatic increase in homicides between the minimum in the late 1950's and the maximum in the 1980's and 1990's happened by the early 1970's, while drug war spending didn't really start until 1973 and didn't really ramp up by the 1980's. We're not seeing the product of communities ravaged by the drug war. What we're seeing is that the drug war has become the focal point for communities that were already disintegrating before the drug war even started.

curun1r 12y ago
> But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. Yes, but how did they get that way? They got that way because they were drawn into that life by older gang members. They see older gang members living a life of relative privilege and they're willing to accept the violence that goes along with it. If you take away the money, those older gang members become much less attractive role models. > As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war. From Wikipedia: "In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million." In that same time period, when the prison population increased over 600%, the US population increased roughly 30%. Unless you've got some other theory for drastically increased incarceration rates, that prison and many others used to house the over 1.5m extra prisoners we have today because of the WoD literally would not exist.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I spent several comments laying out a theory for the increased incarceration rates, supported with charts and graphs. The bottom line is that the increase in incarceration rates is the result of a dramatic spike in crime rates starting in 1960, peaking in the early 1990's, and the public response in the form of harsh sentencing laws in the 1990's (three strikes, mandatory minimums). It's a simple explanation: there are more people in prison because there is more crime, and because the spike in crime caused people to vote (by overwhelming margins, I might add) for harsher sentencing laws. Compare incarceration rates with violent crime rates: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._inca..., http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.jpg http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/vcrime500.j.... You can see that incarceration rates are clearly a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. Violent crime peaked in 1993, at 4.3x the 1960 baseline. Incarceration peaked in 2005, at 4.8x the 1960 baseline. It's not until the late 1990's that incarceration rates catch up with violent crime rates. The popular counterargument is that the increase in crime is itself a result of the social effects of the Drug War, e.g. the impact on kids of fathers being sent to prison for decades on drug charges. But the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1986, and the spike in violent crime rates started in 1960. The slope of the crime increase between 1966 and 1972 is as high as at any time after the drug war really got going in the 1980's, and 80% of the total increase in crime between the 1960 trough and the 1993 peak happened by 1980. It is simply inconsistent with the data to say that the increase in crime since 1960 were anything more than moderately impacted by the Drug War, which didn't really get going until long after crime had already skyrocketed.