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Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

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Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#191

Post by isaacremuant »

ams6110 wrote: post #114
CPLX wrote: post #48

There's all this discussion of these issues, which relate to racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. They seem complicated and nuanced and people throw their hands up and say well what can we do. The answer to that question is actually so simple you can say it in four words: End the drug war. Someone far more eloquent than me, The Wire creator David Simon, can flesh that out a little: http://www.washin…

I'll agree that the drug war is out of control and as a "cure" it's worse than the disease. But people are not being locked up just because they are black, or poor. They are committing crimes, and pleading or being found guilty. The problem I have with pieces like the original article are that they are making it sound like we are engaging in a Gestapo-like rounding up of large numbers of minorities for no reason and…

If a crime is "having drugs" then the war on drugs criminalizes something that maybe shouldn't be criminalized.

If the intent is to help combat drug use then putting a user in prison and ruining his and his family's life doesn't seem like the way to do it. Not to talk about the crime it generates when a business that WILL happen doesn't have any other means to compete than with violence.

There's a great discussion between Glenn Greenwald and former Bush Drug Czar:

https://vimeo.com/32110912 (Janus Forum - Should the US Legalize Drugs?)

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#192

Post by throwawcontro3 »

DanBC wrote: post #189
ams6110 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree that the drug war is out of control and as a "cure" it's worse than the disease. But people are not being locked up just because they are black, or poor. They are committing crimes, and pleading or being found guilty. The problem I have with pieces like the original article are that they are making it sound like we are engaging in a Gestapo-like rounding up of large numbers of minorities for no reason and…

> But people are not being locked up just because they are black, You're ignoring the fact that black people are more likely than white people to be arrested for minor crime; they're more likely to get prison time for similar crimes; etc. > or poor. Ferguson etc showed us that small towns used minor traffic violations as a revenue stream. Someone would have a minor, small, traffic violation and get a fine for it. The…

A review of the literature reveals that there is little evidence for racial bias in the US justice system as a whole, though there likely is bias in some local jurisdictions:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-m...

I was as surprised as you likely will be. The exception is with capital punishment. It looks like black people are more likely to get it than others. But otherwise nationwide crime and punishment statistics look mostly fair.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#193

Post by DanBC »

blazespin wrote: post #190
CPLX wrote: post #48

There's all this discussion of these issues, which relate to racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. They seem complicated and nuanced and people throw their hands up and say well what can we do. The answer to that question is actually so simple you can say it in four words: End the drug war. Someone far more eloquent than me, The Wire creator David Simon, can flesh that out a little: http://www.washin…

This is not a race issue. This is an inner city culture problem. Ending the drug war is a first step. But we still have to give these kids something to do. Pay them to go to school.

>This is not a race issue. This is an inner city culture problem.

You realise that racist policies around suburb building and home loans cause the inner cities to be mostly black? White people got cheap home loans to move into nice neighbourhoods. And that's one of the reason people are calling it a race issue.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#194

Post by yyyyes »

pyre wrote: post #82
atwebb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What will all those newly out of work people do? Making drugs? Selling drugs? Work in treatment? Work in the new recreational environments setup to take drugs? Increase enforcement of public intox/driving issues? Police elsewhere and other issues?

How do you make that transition though? You don't just fire a bunch of people, cast them to the wind with some sort of hand-wavy explanation about how the "invisible hand" will sort everything out in magical fashion. If you just cut all of those people loose, then you will have to deal with the fallout of a bunch of angry unemployed people, and their friends/family/etc. In addition to using it as a "you don't love Am…

Honestly, screw those people. They profiteered off of human misery and enslavement and their actions directly and indirectly wrought chaos on communities worldwide.

I know it's a pipe dream, but personally I think anyone involved with imprisoning drug users / dealers should see the inside of a jail cell themselves.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#195

Post by beat »

ams6110 wrote: post #114
CPLX wrote: post #48

There's all this discussion of these issues, which relate to racism, economic issues, police brutality, crime, etc. They seem complicated and nuanced and people throw their hands up and say well what can we do. The answer to that question is actually so simple you can say it in four words: End the drug war. Someone far more eloquent than me, The Wire creator David Simon, can flesh that out a little: http://www.washin…

I'll agree that the drug war is out of control and as a "cure" it's worse than the disease. But people are not being locked up just because they are black, or poor. They are committing crimes, and pleading or being found guilty. The problem I have with pieces like the original article are that they are making it sound like we are engaging in a Gestapo-like rounding up of large numbers of minorities for no reason and…

I used to think the drug war was the problem. Not anymore. Think about the high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men over the past year. Not a single one of those was over drugs. They were all "walking while black". Ending the drug war would not, on its own, end the "walking while black" problem.

The family structure breakdown among the poor is directly, painfully correlated to the high incarceration rate. Absent fathers are absent because they're in jail, or expect they will be sooner or later, or because they're ashamed because they are unable to provide for their children.

One of my best friends is a doctor in Orlando, who happens to be black. Back during the Trayvon Martin shooting, he told me he would not even drive through Sanford. He didn't feel safe - from the police. In his daily life, he's a key administrator at a large hospital and a radiologist. In Sanford? He's a black man driving a car too nice for him.

That's not about the war on drugs.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#196

Post by [deleted] »

fomojola wrote: post #130
CPLX wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important in policy discussions to distinguish "simple" and "easy" as concepts. Needless to say, it would not be easy to end and unravel the drug war. As a concept and goal, however, it is a simple decision. > What will all of those local police departments do without the 'easy' money from the government? Perhaps they could attempt to solve and prevent crimes involving violence and fraudulent behavior, w…

Only mildly related, but this is a massively underrated point: all too many people conflate "simple" and "easy", not just here but in many other things.

[deleted]

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#197

Post by theptip »

mc32 wrote: post #169
sbov wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that we're throwing them in jail for no reason . The problem is we aren't throwing non-poor non-minorities in jail for the same reasons. Most friends of mine regularly do drugs. Even the self made multi millionaires. None of them have been to jail. They aren't subject to the random ass searches like the poor are. If things were different - if the millionaires were treated with the same suspect, you…

Growing up I lived in a town where there were hippy dealers and there were dreadlock dealers. They both got harrassed pretty evenly and the users I knew also would get stopped and issued summonses for small possession. The police would also confiscate beer in the car, etc. They were nice enough not to cite us for underage drinking, but I think the police were busy with the car thieves and guys testing out the small t…

"They both got harrassed pretty evenly" - If you look at the national statistics, this is definitely not the case, so your anecdote unfortunately isn't representative.

E.g. see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2...

"in investigatory stops, a black man age twenty-five or younger has a 28 percent chance of being stopped for an investigatory reason over the course of a year; a similar young white man has a 12.5 percent chance, and a similar young white woman has only a 7 percent chance. And this is after taking into account other possible influences on being stopped, like how you drive. " [in other words, this sample has been corrected for any difference in base-rate of justification for being stopped].

The interesting thing is, profiling like this can be a self-fulfilling prophecy; if the base-rate of drug possession is equal between blacks and whites, but blacks are stopped more often, then there will be a higher number of arrests of blacks per-capita, and it will look like blacks are more likely of committing a crime. This higher crime rate looks like a justification for profiling, when in fact it's just an artifact of the profiling that was done.

[Note I'm not making any claims about the actual base rate of drug possession, just illustrating an effect with an example]

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#198

Post by lsniddy »

CPLX wrote: post #184
mc32 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes these things happen. They should not happen. But they happen in most counties --even homogenous countries. Also, people don't get killed like this everyday, these are exceptions, not acceptable exceptions, but its also not routine as you make it out to be. The problem is economic and cultural (we allow for guns) so the police take maximum caution, and given the police are the only expression of government in some…

> Yes these things happen. They should not happen. But they happen in most counties --even homogenous countries. What homogenous countries with a comparable level of economic wealth have situations that even remotely resemble our mass incarceration and drug war policies?

China is a good example, though they incarcerate less and execute more

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#199

Post by pyre »

CPLX wrote: post #102
pyre wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps they could attempt to solve and prevent crimes involving violence and fraudulent behavior, which theoretically is the reason they exist in the first place. You are assuming that they are not doing that currently.

That's correct they are not. David Simon has spoken at length on that exact issue, and it's referenced in the article I linked to quoting him.

Do you have numbers to backup the claim that those other crimes are occurring at a higher rate than the number of arrests/convictions for them? In other words, would every "War on Drugs" arrest translate into a "more useful" arrest if we eliminated the War on Drugs (and refocused on other crimes)? My feeling is that it wouldn't.

Re: Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of American Lawyers

#200

Post by toomuchtodo »

mkr-hn wrote: post #171
millermp12 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unlike the lottery, which the poor regularly spent their meager pittance on. Taxation of the poor as Lincoln noted. So can be ban lotteries (and casinos, too) unless participants demonstrate they can afford the losses?

Lotteries are a symptom of the problem of poor financial education. Lottery-funded scholarships are the only way a lot of kids get to college. Ban the lottery, and their parents will blow it on something else. That something else will probably not allocate most of its funding to scholarships. edit: If this country were rational enough for the solutions proposed in replies, we wouldn't even be having this conversation…

You don't need lottery-funded scholarships if you have universal education (as most first world countries do).
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