home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3
/
HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso
/
drugs
/
drug.laws.aid.crime
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1996-05-06
|
5KB
From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Date: 15 Nov 93 14:56 PST
Subject: Conservtvs for Legalization
Message-ID: <1484000408@cdp>
COLUMN RlGHT
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Drug Laws Aid and Abet Crime Wave
Los Angeles Times, November 14, 1993
* Crime bills won't work until drugs are legalized and the
welfare system is reformed.
Congress is about to spend more than $22 billion on a crime bill
that addresses symptoms more than eauses. The money is mainly for
more police and prisons and might do some good if it produces
more convictions and longer sentences. Some repeat offenders will
be curtailed by an amendment to the bill that imposes a mandatory
life sentence after three federal convictions for violent crimes.
Part of the crime problem stems from punishments being scant and
far between. Recently, the Washington Post examined crime and
punishment in the District of Columbia and came to the same
conclusion as the National Rifle Assn. Crime pays.
If you kill someone in DC, you have a 75% chance of getting away
with it. Kven if a murderer ends up convicted, his odds for a
stiff sentence are low. The Post found that only 82 first-degree
murder convictions could be squeezed out of 1,280 killings. The
District of Columbia. of course, has no death penalty.
The explosion of crime from lack of punishment feeds on itself.
Homicide detectives are overwhelmed by the number of murders and
courts are clogged. Incomplete investigations, missing and
intimidated witnesses, plea bargains and early parole have added
to the crime rate by reducing the certainty and severity of
punishment. As crime mounts, the over-crowded criminal-justice
system's ability to cope further declines, making criminal
activity an ever more attractive option to schooling and job
discipline.
What strategies can be employed to end the carnage? Here reason
fails. Liberals blame guns, hopeless poverty and unloved
children. Invariably, the solution comes down to more gun
control.
A gun ban, however, ls counterproductive. It creates profitable
criminal activity for gun runners, and it disarms law-abiding
citizens, leaving them defenseless. Disarming citizens would lead
to an explosion in the crime rate. Not only are attempted crimes
prevented: when the would-be victim is armed, many crimes are not
even attempted.
The District of Columbia's gun ban has added to the crime rate by
giving criminals control over gun sales. The failure of the local
ban has spawned arguments for a federal gun ban. That would only
mean that the guns would eome in with the drugs from Colombia and
Mexieo
To be effective, gun and bullet bans would have to impose far
more Draconian punishments than apply to murder and drug
possession. We shouldn't forget that murder and drugs are already
banned, and both proliferate.
The $22-billion crime bill will be another expensive failure
because it stems from a refusal to recognize the obvious: The
laws against drugs have created a profitable way of life for
people who don't flinch at violence. In trying to protect society
from drug use, we have created an alternative career pattern for
people averse to formal education and regular working hours.
In the District of Columbia, the murder rate is the product of
black males killing each other over the fantastic profits of the
illegal drug trade. Being illegal, drug profits cannot be
protected by contractual rights. Instead, the profits are
distributed by violence, and they go to the most ruthless. The
same sltuation prevailed when alcohol was illegal. Ban makeup,
clgarettes, pantyhose, word processors or guns, and a similar
murder rate wlll be associated with the profits from their
illegal distribution.
Conservatives oppose drug legalization because it implies
society's approval of destructive behavior. But unless we are
prepared to execute people for selling and using drugs, the laws
against drugs will continue to be ineffectual. Indeed, the
frustration from losing the war against drugs has produced far
more dangerous results than the drug culture ltself. We now have
asset-forfeiture laws that mainly victimize the innocent, and
dangerous assaults on our Second Amendment rights.
More prisons and more police are not the answer, because the
welfare system produces an endless supply of fatherless sons to
take the place of each drug dealer who is put away. In 1991, 68%
of black births were to unmarried women, up from 37% in 1970.
Fewer and fewer young blacks ever experience a father or see a
work ethic. For people cast aside by a stupid social policy,
brigandage has become a way of life.
No progress will be made against the crime rate--regardless of
the number of new crime bills--until drugs are legalized and the
welfare system is reformed. Gun-control measures in no way affect
the root causes of the problem and will intensify crime by
creating a profitable new product for illegal trade.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Craig Raberts a former assistant secretary of Treasury
chairman of the Institute for Politicai Economy and a
Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington.
--------------------------------------------------------------
copied by hand from the Times by jim Rosenfield