By Chuck Ream
Police are not solving crimes like they used to, and now we can prove it. Law enforcement dollars would be better spent protecting our safety or finding criminals than on persecuting potheads.
The urgency of spending local law
enforcement dollars wisely is
illustrated by what currently happens in Michigan following a rape. Thousands
of “rape kits” in Michigan have not been processed, yet huge sums are spent on
cannabis law enforcement. These priorities are wrong.
It is
relatively unknown that law enforcement has been continually less effective at finding real criminals since it began
to focus on Drug War. Murderers,
rapists and robbers are apprehended far less often in 2009 than they were when
Drug War began in earnest in 1971.
Data by Riedel, (2008) “describes the decline in the
percent of homicides resulting in arrests and charges from over 90% in 1960 to
61% in 2006”
The percentage of rapes and robberies “cleared
by arrest” has declined far more than homicides. Burglary (17.4% solved), and
car theft (12.6% solved) now appear to be low risk occupations.
Criminal
justice author Scott Christianson points out that while crime in the USA has
dropped the number of arrests went from 3.3 million in 1960 to 14 million in
2004. He asks
“…if
reported crime has been going down and arrests have gone up, what
accounts for the plummeting arrest clearance rates for murder, robbery, rape, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft?
Part of the answer must involve drug law enforcement…. Instead of arresting suspects for burglaries and other serious reported crimes, cops today spend much of their energy going after illegal drugs. Their arrest rate for drug possession (especially marijuana) has shot up more than 500 times from what it was in 1965.”
accounts for the plummeting arrest clearance rates for murder, robbery, rape, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft?
Part of the answer must involve drug law enforcement…. Instead of arresting suspects for burglaries and other serious reported crimes, cops today spend much of their energy going after illegal drugs. Their arrest rate for drug possession (especially marijuana) has shot up more than 500 times from what it was in 1965.”
Ousey and Lee (2010) make it clear that “there
are several good reasons why this trend in clearance rates is disconcerting….
First, it raises questions about the effectiveness of recent law enforcement
policies and practices…it seems curious that homicide clearance rates have been
declining during a period in which incarceration rates have been sharply
rising…. Second, it signals a decline in punishment certainty and threatens to
undermine deterrence principles, a key foundation of our criminal justice
system. Finally, lower clearance rates indicate that the state is ineffective
at insulating citizens from violent offenders, which may contribute to negative
social reactions such as loss of faith in public officials, an increased sense
of fear and insecurity, and a general proliferation of firearms….”
It is sometimes argued that small
scale cannabis arrests serve to reduce the amount of serious or violent crime.
The “broken windows” theory of
public safety asserts that a police emphasis on prosecuting small scale crimes
will lead to the prevention of larger crimes.
Data from Harcourt and Ludwig at the
University of Chicago prove that, if they have any effect, small scale pot
arrests increase the
frequency of other crimes. The authors concluded that pot arrests took officers
off the street for long periods of time and distracted them from being able to
focus on fighting other crime. Veteran cops call pot busts “a waste of time”.
These arrests drain time and resources not only from police, but also from
courts, jails, prosecutors, and public defenders.
Criminologist Harry Levine (2010)
asks, “Is this what Americans want their police to be doing – arresting
enormous numbers of young people, disproportionately Black and Latino, and destroying their futures, for…pot
possession?”
Americans are usually surprised to
learn that the effectiveness of law enforcement at solving crime has taken a
dive since police turned their effort to Drug War.
If cannabis is damaging to our society
we should not make it a low priority. However, data from Thomas and Davis
(2009) shows that about 94% of the “social costs” of cannabis have to do with
the costs of enforcement, not the cost of health problems.
There
is no situation where a
problem with dangerous drugs is improved by turning their manufacture and distribution
over to criminal gangs!
Police prefer to chase potheads, but wouldn’t
your family be better protected if
officers were preventing crime or finding real criminals?
