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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 13, 2014 at 12:13pm

David Nelson Seaman said:  "Civil and Criminal statues do not have a race quota, religious, national origin or place of birth designation preference"

If you look at how these statutes do work out in practice:

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There is more dealing of dangerous drugs (particularly amphetamines, but not limited to that) by white people living in white neighborhoods than by black people in black neighborhoods. The police are aware of this.

It's easier (less privacy and more police presence) to observe drug sales in black neighborhoods, and this is where the police go hunting when they want to score a "success" in this symbiotic "war". When they arrest a black person for a drug "crime", the charges are typically heavier than for a white person in similar circumstances, [perhaps because] the resources available for his defense are typically inadequate, a conviction is far more likely and the sentence will be significantly more severe than for a convicted white person.

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We can separate the intent of a law from the intent of its enforcers and from the conditions determining how it will operate in practice. The defacto values of a society, however, show up in whether or not policies that produce indefensible outcomes are changed, or left to work unhindered.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 10th mo. 13, 2014 at 7:44pm

No, we don't all agree that "the penalties need to be harsher."

That's the style of thinking that got us to the mess we're in; and why would we want to persist in it?

If you really want to eradicate something, you don't attack it directly -- You out-compete it in some way.

Making something illegal makes it more profitable for those unscrupulous, financially desperate -- or powerful enough -- to risk the penalties or to evade them. It leads to the banned activity being better hidden and thus less controllable. It hinders the people involved from going to the police or seeking legal recourse when cheated or threatened with violence. It gives the police "something on everybody",  in the case of a generally-harmless drug like pot -- and with substances that truly need to be controlled, the potential of planting contraband on anyone they want but can't get legitimately (as probably happened to at least one activist friend of mine.

Alcohol is an extremely dangerous drug; and 'harsh penalties' for dealing in it established a criminogenic economic niche in the early 20th Century, notorious for the violence and corruption it engendered.

Probably poor neighborhoods do "benefit" from having some illegal industry where unemployed residents have a reasonable chance of being able to "earn" an income. It would be wonderful if we paid people more, provided more opportunities for helping and educating themselves and others and receiving an income from such activities... but in the present collective mindset, that isn't going to happen, is it?

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