If the Drug War is Failing, Where did all the Cocaine Go?

pmoseman said:
Here is what I found interesting in this article.

"Pew found that states with the largest prison population drops saw bigger reductions in crime rates than states where prison populations are still increasing." - NPR

"Prison decline has little impact on crime rates." - Pew
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It sure hits at the idea that prisons seem to have little effect on crime rates. So why would we continue to ruin peoples lives and spend all this money on something that seems to have so little influence on the behavior it is trying to prevent and control. The things that actually make a difference to prevent future crime are what needs to be focused on and the stuff that is makeing little or no possitive efffect and see to be haveing a negative effect need to go. Like jackating a non violent drug offended with a record that will make thier reabsoption back into sociaety dificult thus promoting the likely hood that a person will reofend.

"Of those released in 2005 and followed up with in 2008, 49% were not employed. Further analysis
of the data showed that the recidivism rate among the unemployed offenders was 42.4%;
recidivism among the employed offenders was 26.2%. Employment was the number one predictor
of recidivism. Of those who were employed, 72% of them made less than $10,000 in one year of
employment."

INDIANAPOLIS-MARION COUNTY CITY-COUNTY COUNCIL RE-ENTRY POLICY STUDY COMMISSION REPORT

Prison Programs Recidivism Reentry

"People are sick and tired of this revolving door," Gelb says. "They say, 'We've tried this experiment. We've tripled, quadrupled our prison population, and yet we still are seeing these people coming back and back, over and over again. There's got to be a better way.' " from the npr article

The truth that is coming out is that prisons are not very effective as deterrents or solutions to non violent drug offenders. They dont seem to be much of a factor in preventing or controlling crime. The idea of giving someone a record that will hamper them from rejoining society causes way more crime than it prevents. Prison has its place.. it should be there to keep dangerous people away from the public and thus keep them safe. The current policies that are using incarceration and life time records with no chance to earn the removal of these records just feed the Billion Dollar prison business with a never ending stream of workers and feed regular business with a never ending supply of cheap almost slave labor.

But the public who is paying for all this, continuing to be hampered but the high rates of crime it perpetuates, is seeing what is really going on. They are sick dealing with the unaddressed problems combining with a system designed to make people fail cause a never ending money pit providing nothing but a steady stream of crime. Sick of watching thier loved ones who strugle with drugs and addiction being treated like criminals and getting stuck in a system who's main effect seems to be to perpetuate its self.

Drug use should be decriminalized and its problems addressed in a fashion that helps the users and addicts and the community. Instead of one that promotes the use of drugs while failing to address current issues.

There is never any money in a cure.

"A new report from In the Public Interest (ITPI) revealed last week that private prison companies are striking deals with states that contain clauses guaranteeing high prison occupancy rates"
6 Shocking Revelations About How Private Prisons Make Their Money

Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and "Low-Crime Taxes" Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations

The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

The current legal system is a business. It is a business that deals in human lives and it is a business of slavery. Who are the real criminals.

There is never any money in a cure.

pmoseman said:
"Prison decline has little impact on crime rates." - Pew
Click to expand...

"Three Arizona for-profit prison contracts have a staggering 100% quota, even though a 2012 analysis from Tucson Citizen shows that the company’s per-day charge for each prisoner has increased an average of 13.9% over the life of the contracts." NPR

"imprisonment rates up in AZ 4%, crime down 4%" pew

yep.. even though crime is way down they still are under contract to fill the prisons up.. its a real sick business.
 
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"Pew found that states with the largest prison population drops saw bigger reductions in crime rates than states where prison populations are still increasing." - NPR

"Prison decline has little impact on crime rates." - Pew

neversickanymore said:
It sure hits at the idea that prisons seem to have little effect on crime rates.
Click to expand...
It seems to cover all the bases fairly well. You do recognize the trouble I am having trusting NPR, do you not?
 
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Good eye, there are somewhat contradictory quotes in the article. Welcome to the internet. The fact of the matter is, our country's privatized prison system relies on racial profiling and high arrest rates to crowd jails and line the pockets of our US Justice Dept. The solution is simple: decriminalization. Greedy, bullheaded politicians are conducting the train that is the drug war, and the American population is tied to the tracks.
 
Racial profiling is a problem which decriminalizing will correct?
The largest disparity between black and white arrests, in terms of drugs, is sale and manufacter. So depending in how you define decriminalization, typically that means for possession, the disparity would theoretically remain unchanged.
 
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pmoseman said:
It seems to cover all the bases fairly well. You do recognize the trouble I am having trusting NPR, do you not?
Click to expand...
I do not know why you are having trouble trusting NPR. If you look at the two things noted on the right side of the PEW chart you will see a comparison between the 10 states who had the biggest decrease in incarceration and the ten states who had the 10 biggest incarceration increase and the change in crime. The sates that decreased their prison populations the most showed a crime decrease of 12% while the one who increase their their prison populations decreased by 10%. This tells shows us "that states with the largest prison population drops saw bigger reductions in crime rates than states where prison populations are still increasing."

theWhiteLarryBird said:
Good eye,
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Not that good.. more like a selective eye.


Isn't is sick that although AZ had a 21% decrease in crime they had a 4% increase in incarceration. Have to fulfill that contract and fill the place up. doesn't matter if crime is down. have to find away. The mere fact that the government is legally obligated to fill prisons to 100% occupancy means that it is no longer determined by the level of crime. It instead becomes an influence on the level of crime as they have to fill those cells somehow. Also the fact that the government is responsible to fill and keep filled the dealing in human lives for big profit prison system.. this means that a significant drop in crime will lead to a significant increase in the length of a sentence.. so I guess that sentencing is now based on a contract with some scumbag company and has nothing to do with punishment or prevention of crime. Remember that these are people and thier lives and the real fact that they are confined in cells.. a small very small room with little or no windows and nothing to do. who are the criminals?

Follow anything to do with the drug war far enough and you will find the money.
 
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..Yes, I could've specified the fact that the racial issue is systemic and not directly caused by illegal drugs. To reaffirm my argument, the war on drugs is made possible in part by corrupted law enforcement, politicians, and yes, people like myself and others on this board (except you, i wouldnt want to make any assumptions) because we are criminals by default..

The war on drugs can not physically, theoretically, partially, or possibly eliminate drugs or drug usage. This illusion of failure permits drug busts, illegal searches, and set-ups/stings (to name a few) to continue. The general population has not connected the dots. The DEA will continue to support cartels, the CIA to smuggle drugs, and the ICE will remain in bed with highly influential Mexican drug kingpins.
 
pmoseman said:
It seems to cover all the bases fairly well. You do recognize the trouble I am having trusting NPR, do you not?
Click to expand...

If I had to guess I'd say it's the fact that they are secular liberals pushing for the destruction of the traditional family with their big city atheism and rampant homosexual agenda
 
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"If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on."
 
bit_pattern said:
If I had to guess I'd it's the fact that they are secular liberals pushing for the destruction of the traditional family with their big city atheism and rampant homosexual agenda
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LOL.

My vote for best reply in thread.
 
Ok, how about this: If the WoD is working, why is all the heroin coming from?

An the answer to where the cocaine has gone? Well there are better and cheaper alternatives that give similar highs. MDMA(better) and Adderall(cheaper) come to mind.
 
My guess is that all the cocaine has gone to Countries where people are willing to pay more for it, there seems to be an increase in cocaine use where I live that has been ongoing for a number of years now and what people pay for cocaine here is ridiculous, especially considering it often is not very good. I would wager that cocaine use has remained steady or is increasing in much of Europe, so the cartels are probably just shipping the product where there is more money to be made. I don't think the reduction in the availability or popularity of cocaine in the US has much to do with interdiction efforts by law enforcement agencies at all.

The prevalence of relatively cheap and high purity methamphetamine in much of the US may contribute to this situation as well.

RTrain I really don't know what kind of MDMA you are taking that you could describe it as a similar high to cocaine, as my experiences with the two drugs, as well as a basic knowledge of how they both work, tells me they are far from similar. Which drug is better is subjective, in my view cocaine is the superior drug but 5 years ago I would of said the opposite, regardless, I feel the two drugs are nothing alike and doubt the availability of MDMA has much impact on the availability or popularity of cocaine.
 
drug_mentor said:
My guess is that all the cocaine has gone to Countries where people are willing to pay more for it, there seems to be an increase in cocaine use where I live that has been ongoing for a number of years now and what people pay for cocaine here is ridiculous, especially considering it often is not very good. I would wager that cocaine use has remained steady or is increasing in much of Europe, so the cartels are probably just shipping the product where there is more money to be made. I don't think the reduction in the availability or popularity of cocaine in the US has much to do with interdiction efforts by law enforcement agencies at all.
Click to expand...

Exactly. You'd have to be mental to think the war on drugs is actually succeeding.
 
neversickanymore said:
The mere fact that the government is legally obligated to fill prisons to 100% occupancy means that it is no longer determined by the level of crime.
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Taxes pay for unoccupied beds whether they are in private or public prisons. The quotas make private prisons more appealing, but not all private prisons have them.
State contracts wasting a few million dollars is nothing new, and a single false imprisonment case is going to cost the state a million dollars as well.
 
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In the case of private prisons with quotas the prison overhead is paid by public tax collection whether or not prisoners are in the system. That ends up costing more than the overhead for public systems, but the overhead still exists for public prisons as well.
The quotas have cost a few million dollars. It has not made prisoners.
I do not know how you think "obligated to be filled" changes anything. Once the prison is built you have to pay to maintain it and the cost of building the prison is spread over 20 years, so you take that out of profits, such a business risk private prisons avoided by putting quotas into their contracts. It has pulled prisoners from public prisons and put them into private prisons, but when a prison is out of prisoners, it closes down.
 
^ then where would slave workers come from?
Stealing them from other countries is generally frowned upon nowadays.
 
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