As you can see, there was a dramatic increase both in the imprisonment rate (the top graph), and the convictions of drug-related crimes, particularly over the mid-1980s. Undoubtedly, some of this is not just an exogenous increase in enforcement of drug crimes, though some probably was. The increase in drug crimes would likely point to the appearance of the scourge of crack cocaine, which increased both violence and contributed generally to the decay of inner cities and destroyed numerous lives. Nevertheless, this increase continues even after the crack epidemic wanes by the early 1990s. Most of those in state prisons and jails are there fore violent crimes; drug crimes only constituted 20% of total crimes in recent BJS data. But as Jeff Miron, who is speaking in the article before this one on drug legalization, notes, our enforcement of drug prohibition actually leads to increased violence among drug users and particularly drug sellers. The connection between violence and black markets has been known for a long time, but it's important to note that in black markets, private property rights cannot be enforced by legal institutions like courts, but rather are routinely enforced through brutal force. Legitimate expansion of market share cannot happen through advertising but can happen by killing one's competitors.
The aggregate statistics are really eye-catching, but even more eye-catching are the racial differences in incarceration. As the Pew study notes, 1 out of every 15 Black men are in prison or jail. One out of every 9 Black men aged 20-34 are in jail or prison. Sixty percent of all Black men with a high school degree or less will have been in jail or prison at least once in their life by the time they are 35, leading Bruce Western to refer to prison as the "modal experience" of uneducated black males.
2 comments:
i saw this earlier today and those numbers still are tough for me to wrap my head around even though I "knew" they were pushing that high.
It is stark, especially when you look at across time, across states, or across races and education. Most of the growth has been among Black uneducated young men ages 18-35. When you take them out, the 1 in 100 number becomes more like 1 in 330.
Ultimately, once has to determine not just the costs of the imprisonment of Americans but also the benefits. There are many benefits, such as reductions in crime. The crime rate has fallen to historical lows. Cities like New York used to be dystopian nightmares. Now they're not. So there are benefits.
The relevant question is whether, at the margin, the marginal prisoner convicted has a positive net social benefits. We may have a marginally too of an imprisonment rate if the marginal prisoner's benefit to society is negligible. Many of the drug users in prison may fall under that category, for instance. I'm not familiar with any studies that have attempted to look at whether that is the case.
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