I didn't think that the direct effects of policy of the drug war were considered the primary driver of prison population growth. The abstract (because I don't have time to read the whole thing) doesn't mention how much more money police departments have received, and how their funding rates are directly tied to how much 'crime' they 'fight'. The author lists what he sees as the ways drug war policy could impact prison population growth but the list is meager and does not integrate drug war policy into the broader social and political context.
The drug war was just a subset of a systematic antagonism by the state against certain population segments. The same communities that were ravaged by crime and police alike were pushed into calamity by social policies that lifted up ahem privileged segments of the population while leaving others in the dust with inadequate social and economic resources.
The only connection between conviction rates and the drug war the author considers are drug related convictions. That is, frankly, stupid. It is the increased presence of police brought about by the drug war by increased funding, bloating of federal agencies, and escalated enforcement practices that links the policy to the effect. If a cop is in the neighborhood because of the drug war and decides to rough someone up and arrest them for 'quality of life' offenses or 'resisting arrest', that is an effect of policy, of which the drug war is a major component.
Normally I wouldn't feel so skeptical of an expert's findings on a highly complicated subject, but there's also the fact that this publication claims it is nonintuitive and runs counter to the conventional thoughts of his peers. I think the lines of reasoning I tried to point out are well demonstrated in the first source he cites, Michelle Alexander's fantastic book. I think the author can only achieve the results he can by drawing a small box around some policies and calling that the drug war when what other people call the drug war is far larger than that.
P.S. Another comment mentioned gang violence, which is strongly linked to inadequate social and economic resources and a large illegal drug trade.
P.P.S. When the police and prosecution get to decide who is a violent offender, you can't use measurements of who is a violent offender in order to establish whether or not police policy is effective and just. Furthermore, why do people become violent offenders? The higher order effects of a policy that treats communities as disposable, unwanted, and antagonistic certainly feed into this.
The drug war was just a subset of a systematic antagonism by the state against certain population segments. The same communities that were ravaged by crime and police alike were pushed into calamity by social policies that lifted up ahem privileged segments of the population while leaving others in the dust with inadequate social and economic resources.
The only connection between conviction rates and the drug war the author considers are drug related convictions. That is, frankly, stupid. It is the increased presence of police brought about by the drug war by increased funding, bloating of federal agencies, and escalated enforcement practices that links the policy to the effect. If a cop is in the neighborhood because of the drug war and decides to rough someone up and arrest them for 'quality of life' offenses or 'resisting arrest', that is an effect of policy, of which the drug war is a major component.
Normally I wouldn't feel so skeptical of an expert's findings on a highly complicated subject, but there's also the fact that this publication claims it is nonintuitive and runs counter to the conventional thoughts of his peers. I think the lines of reasoning I tried to point out are well demonstrated in the first source he cites, Michelle Alexander's fantastic book. I think the author can only achieve the results he can by drawing a small box around some policies and calling that the drug war when what other people call the drug war is far larger than that.
P.S. Another comment mentioned gang violence, which is strongly linked to inadequate social and economic resources and a large illegal drug trade.
P.P.S. When the police and prosecution get to decide who is a violent offender, you can't use measurements of who is a violent offender in order to establish whether or not police policy is effective and just. Furthermore, why do people become violent offenders? The higher order effects of a policy that treats communities as disposable, unwanted, and antagonistic certainly feed into this.