The Criminalization of Drugs And its Effect on Entrepreneurship and economic growth.
The criminalization of drugs has been a goldmine for the judicial system and apocalyptic for those who self medicate their anxieties by using drugs made illegal by the government.
Thirty-nine billion dollars are spent keeping 2.3 million people in 1,739 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 901 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, 76 indian country jails as well as military prisons and immigration detention centers (source). Each prisoner costs on average $31,286 to incarcerate (although in New York City that rate increases to $60,000). A teenager kept in jail is required to receive high school courses there, raising the annual cost per incarcerated teenager to as much as $148,767.
Since the “war on drugs” began in 1969, as the brainchild of the later-disgraced president Richard Nixon, there have been over 50 million arrests for using or transporting drugs.
An arrest for a drug possession is made every 25 seconds in America; nearly half of all drug arrests (574,000) were for marijuana possession compared to 505,681 arrests for violent crimes such as murder, rape,robbery and aggravated assault.
Simply put: to meet their goals, police make more arrests for simple marijuana possession than any other crime. These arrests raise serious questions about the government’s stated goal. In addition, it is hard to ignore the racial disparity these arrests. Black people being more than two and a half times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white people.
A conviction for a drug procession is devastating financially as the convicted person and his loved ones. He or she is charged court fees, fines, public defender fees. Even more insidious a criminal conviction for marijuana can bar an individual’s access to welfare benefits and public housing for years. With the stigma of a felony conviction or being labeled a"drug user" it becomes almost impossible to get a job and without access to the welfare system or housing many people end up homeless living in shelters.
And therein lies the connection to our complex welfare system: many of the people arrested come out of the welfare state; unable to legally start a business or get a job the turn to the drug industry either to make extra money or as a way to alleviate the stifling anxiety from being in a system that does not allow for improvement or a legal way out.
An inmate visits with his young daughter in prison.
There are 70 million Americans with criminal records in part due to this, and 2.3 million presently incarcerated. Another five million Americans are on parole or probation. Children with parents on parole, in jail, or prison number almost 12 million, making this a scenario of child endangerment as well of judicial inequality. The proliferation of drugs and the criminality of them with the resultant incarceration of men — particularly African-American and Hispanic men — is a factor behind why African-American elementary school students today have lower living standards than their counterparts did in 1965.
Perhaps the most shocking statistic is that America, our country of the home of the brave and the land of the free now has the second highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, where the rate is five times that of Iran or China.
Perhaps a disorganized and dis-incentivizing welfare system is one root cause of these issues. No matter how you see it, the welfare system simply does not encourage individuals to enter the economy. For many, that leaves no other option then delving into the underground economy to make money.
Men in the system have very few routes to increase their income without having “surplus” earnings subtracted from their welfare benefits. But by participating in the underground economy, they may be able to earn extra cash. (See my interview with one former drug dealer here.) Or, both men and women can also earn money by working undercover for the police (see my interview with one CI here). In this evil bargain, an individual gets rewarded with off-the-books (i.e. illegal) payments for turning in a family member, friend, or neighbor. And, of course, like many business deals, this arrangement has incentives. If the informant's victim is successfully prosecuted, he or she can apply to take over their apartment, on top of the $5,000 illegal and nontaxable cash award.
As the Theory of Public Choice has taught us following the money is illuminating. Developed by Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, the theory argues that in most political decisions people support their economic self interest. The largest opponents the decriminalization of marijuana, which would instantly decrease the number of prisoners and families suffering from non-violent drug convictions, have a vested interest in the prison industrial complex. First, the 700,000-member union of prison guards makes its living supervising the vast population of inmates. Second, the union of municipal unions including local police forces. Both group’s resources are directly correlated with the rates of conviction based on number of arrests. The third organized force against decriminalizing minor drug offenses is the bail bondsmen, which automatically fight any decriminalization movement or reform of the bail system in my opinion.
Finally, the blatant racism of the prison system must be analyzed against this chilling hypothesis: suppose the prison system were partly intended as a method of employing people of Caucasian descent and incarcerating those who are not? This fact was invisible to me until, after 18 years of part-time teaching in both local jails and youth homes, as well as in maximum security federal prisons — such as the Sullivan Correctional Facility (a maximum-security federal penitentiary), in Fallsburg, New York, where by chance I became friendly with a senior administrator.I asked her one day, ‘How many prisoners do you have here?’ ‘Twenty-four hundred’ was the reply. ‘And how many guards?’ ‘Six hundred and twelve.’ Then I asked: ‘What is the racial breakdown of the prisoners versus guards?’ ‘There are 606 white guards and six black or Hispanic guards. The prisoners are all black and Hispanic except for three whites.’
Although these numbers are over eight years old and perhaps the Sullivan facility is an extreme case, it captures the point that is nationally consistent: a much higher percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics are incarcerated than whites. And in either case, almost everyone that is incarcerated is poor.
Conclusion
Everyone at one time or another needs financial assistance. The ups and downs of life can be brutal. A physical or mental illness, an accident, divorce, a failed business or poor career choice potentially can lead to temporary impoverishment of our best and brightest. Getting people emergency help is vital to maintaining a free and civil society.
This shocking state of affairs, its implications on our economic growth, crime incarceration rates and its insidious effects on our nation's family structures as well as the systems disastrous effects on on our visions for eliminating poverty through jobs and entrepreneurship is seldom discussed.The system is complex, and difficult to understand for those trying to help simplify it and find ways to bring the issue up. With a mind boggling number of types of assistance or "welfare" programs totalling over 1 trillion dollars per year, coming out of the Department of Health and Human Affairs which has 80,000 employees just in its building in Washington DC., we must understand the system and then improve it, before it completely bankrupts us. In many ways, this massive hypocrisy and injustice is our country’s greatest threat.
As I sit with Maria and Alberto, I can’t help but wonder about their destiny--and millions of other Americans--in a system that harms them more than it helps; and the damages to their psyches, leading to harm in the next generation that we have not yet understood.
Names and some details have been changed to protect the people mentioned.
Special thanks to Peter Wagner, the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Institute, Bernadette Rabuy, Senior Policy Analyst at the Prison Policy institute, and the Vera Institute for inspiring my interest in this topic with their wonderful writing. All mistakes are my own.
Additional research and editing was done by Jennifer Farley and Sophie Zhou.