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InvisibleSimplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
The twisted financial incentives behind the war on drugs * 1
    #20505102 - 09/01/14 08:50 AM (9 years, 6 months ago)

The twisted financial incentives behind the war on drugs

Updated by German Lopez on August 29, 2014, 1:00 p.m. ET @germanrlopez german@vox.com
A man in New York protests the war on drugs. Andrew Burton

The war on drugs has exacerbated deep racial disparities in the US criminal justice system. There are a lot of reasons for this, including implicit bias and sometimes outright racism among cops and judges. There are also sentencing laws that target crack cocaine, one of the few drugs used more by black Americans than white Americans.

Another explanation for the racial disparities, however, is that the war on drugs can encourage cops to go after easy targets, such as minority communities with little financial and political clout.

Neill Franklin, a retired major who served for 34 years in the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department, witnessed many of these disparities during his everyday work. As a former police officer and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which opposes the war on drugs, Franklin is very familiar with the history of drug enforcement. I spoke with him on Wednesday about his experiences, and how being on the front lines of the war on drugs influenced his thinking about racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

Neill Franklin

Retired Major Neill Franklin now opposes the war on drugs. (Courtesy of LEAP)

German Lopez: How did the war on drugs lead to institutional racism in law enforcement?

Neill Franklin: The perception that we have of young black men in this country has, historically, always been a problem during and after slavery. But during the transition out of slavery going into the 1800s and 1900s, we started to make some progress for change. Then we started the drug war.

We actually started the prohibition of drugs 100 years ago, in 1914. But it was more a federal effort until the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon started the drug war. Unfortunately, that was around the same time when many blue-collar jobs had left and were continuing to leave our urban centers, where many black males were employed.

GL: What happened then?

NF: When the jobs left, the biggest industry to get into to make ends meet became the drug trade. And those who ventured over to that business, because they couldn't get employment elsewhere, were now subjected to the federal government bribing local law enforcement with grant money to get into the drug war.

I remember in the late 1970s, the money coming to our department in the Maryland State Police. We were able to increase our drug investigative unit. It went from a unit to a bureau almost overnight.

This assistance helped us take out major drug organizations, and we took out a number of them in Baltimore. But to do that, we took out the low-hanging fruit to work up the chain to find who was at the top of the pyramid. It started with low-level drug dealers, working our way up to mid-level management, all the way up to the kingpins.

""We were able to increase our drug investigative unit. It went from a unit to a bureau almost overnight""

But we also got another bright idea: Instead of going after people selling, how about going after people buying? That meant we were locking up even more people within our communities of color.

GL: Do you think going after these communities created a stigma in law enforcement?

...

[rest on the link]

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/29/6075527/how-the-war-on-drugs-led-to-institutional-racism?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_name=share-button&utm_campaign=vox&utm_content=article-share-top


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OfflineFreeTheSoul
The wonderer.

Registered: 01/04/14
Posts: 2,297
Last seen: 2 years, 4 months
Re: The twisted financial incentives behind the war on drugs [Re: Simplepowa]
    #20509355 - 09/02/14 06:17 AM (9 years, 6 months ago)

Drug laws are fucked up, people who actively enforce those laws are either ignorant/arrogant or have no morals. So many other ways to make a HONEST living. A lot of them don't care though because they are psychopaths and don't care about people besides themselves. They can try to rationalize their actions anyway they want but the ruler of the universe will always know the truth and they will be punished accordingly. Its not a matter of if for their punishment its a matter of when. Im not saying judges, prosecutors, FBI, and cops are bad. But people who actively go after drug users and sellers are bad, aka the DEA. If you believe in hell thats where they are going, if you believe in reincarnation well they gonna be some shitty little thing that lives a horrible life. If you believe in neither they are gonna be served a fat dose of karma eventually.

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