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Thread: America’s safer streets: why is elusive

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  1. #1
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    The above chart (even if the numbers are exaggerated) prompts a couple of questions that we really need to understand the answers to before we throw more money at this war.

    - Why are we waging a war on the drugs in the first place? What is "real" threat?

    - Why is the drug problem getting worse after we spent billions on "combating" it?

    - Why don't we wage a war on political correctness (both left and right) which include the argument that we have to wage the war in the first place? It is political dogma and the associated propaganda that traps us indefinitely in a bubble of stupidity. Pop the bubble and we'll have freedom of thought which will enable us to actually come up with more intelligent solutions to real problems.
    There are a lot of rice bowls that would be broken if the current system were to change. The first link that Fuchs provided highlights that. Billions and billions are involved along with all the LE jobs that go with those billions. Combine that with good old fashioned Puritanical moralism (sic) and you have a very firmly established system.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  2. #2
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    Carl,

    I watched the links Fuchs provided and found them very interesting, but on the other hand little new, since I was very aware of those issues for some time. I conducting a security survey of a U.S. prison in the early 90s to assess the security for putting what we now call a HVI there for a while. Spent a fair amount of time with guards, and they were all critical of the drug war back then for the reasons stated in the video.

    The point of the questions were to clarify intent of the war for our national leadership. They need to openly discuss why are we waging it to begin with it? What is the real threat? Why is the problem getting worse after 40 years or so of fighting the drug war? What are the consequences of fighting the drug war?

    The world was going to end if we legalized alcohol, but somehow we survived. We haven't outlawed tobacco, just made it tougher to use, yet we manage to survive. We can discourage drug use my limiting job options with drug tests, etc. at much less cost than what appears to be tragic waste of dollars and ruining people's lives with the label of felon if they were busted for drug use. You are right though, that would threaten a lot of livelihoods tied to the drug war.

  3. #3
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Link to Real News Network interview of Law Enforcement Officers against Prohibition. Never new there was such a group



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjwv6...eature=g-all-u
    Last edited by slapout9; 10-19-2012 at 10:25 PM. Reason: stuff

  4. #4
    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    The point of the questions were to clarify intent of the war for our national leadership. They need to openly discuss why are we waging it to begin with it? What is the real threat? Why is the problem getting worse after 40 years or so of fighting the drug war? What are the consequences of fighting the drug war?
    Bill:

    Sorry I misunderstood.

    I think the smart ones have asked all those questions. Their answers to themselves are that it doesn't work and the whole thing needs to be radically changed-ie. legalization to some extent of some to all of it. But they won't admit that openly because they are afraid of the 'But what about the children?' argument.

    Here in Colorado the legalization of marijuana is on the ballot. The radio commercials for are what you would expect, it doesn't work, it treats adults like children, tides of money for the cartels and marijuana isn't actually all that bad. The radio commercials against are variations of the 'But what about the children?' argument. We'll see how it plays out.

    A fellow I know, a magnificent old gentleman who has done things only a handful of people in the world have done, decided to vote for legalization because he said it just sort of occurred to him that the current course doesn't make any sense. He can't be the only one out there, so maybe things will change.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

  5. #5
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    I cannot confirm this is legit, but it#s certainly interesting if it is:

    http://www.good.is/posts/black-and-a...es-of-drug-use

    A study published today in the Archives of General Psychiatry says that black and Asian teens are less likely to use drugs and alcohol than white people their age. In a survey of more than 72,000 young people conducted by Dan Blazer, a psychiatry professor at Duke Medical Center, 39 percent of white teens and 37 percent of Latinos reported having abused substances in the past year, compared to 32 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Asians. When it came to drugs alone, 20 percent of whites, 19 percent of blacks, and 12 percent of Asians reported using.
    coupled with

    Juvenile Arrest Rate Trends
    Drug abuse violation arrest rates were equal for white juveniles and black juveniles in 1980.
    Juvenile Arrest Rates for Drug Abuse Violations by Race, 1980-2009


    makes the whole war on drugs look more like a race war that replaced segregation nation-wide than like actual policing.

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    Council Member ganulv's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    I cannot confirm this is legit
    The journal is published by the AMA and is considered perhaps the flagship U.S. psychiatric journal. That does not necessarily, of course, insure lack of issues in research design, the usual problems inherent in the peer review process, or lack of intellectual integrity on the part of the authors, but I would say it qualifies the article as legit.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    [M]akes the whole war on drugs look more like a race war that replaced segregation nation-wide than like actual policing.
    False dichotomy!

    I have not read the article, but I do wonder how the numbers breakdown by locale. For example, does anyone know if drug-related arrests take place at a higher rate in urban vs. rural areas?
    Last edited by ganulv; 11-06-2012 at 07:56 PM. Reason: typo fix
    If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)

  7. #7
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ganulv View Post
    False dichotomy!
    Add a "to me" at the end and it'll be impervious to such criticism.

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    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Prison Population Can Shrink When Police Crowd Streets

    A catchy title from the NYT (thanks to a Twitter alert). Which opens with:
    Now that the United States has the world’s highest reported rate of incarceration, many criminologists are contemplating another strategy. What if America reverted to the penal policies of the 1980s? What if the prison population shrank drastically? What if money now spent guarding cellblocks was instead used for policing the streets?

    In short, what would happen if the rest of the country followed New York City’s example?
    Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/ny...pagewanted=all

    Lots of links to explore.

    Personally I wonder if crime and the better criminals have realised street crime is just too dangerous and not so profitable - fraud & forgery for example are generally safer for the criminal. Secondly, by jailing fewer NYC has reduced the educational impact of being in jail.
    davidbfpo

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