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Criminal Justice and Human Rights in the New Century

Go to "Drug Abuse" - a separate thread in this conference

Item 1 - 31-AUG-2001 15:03 Elliott Currie

WELCOME

1:1) 01-SEP-2001 02:48 Richard Farson

I want to welcome all of you to this much anticipated policy forum, Criminal Justice and Human Rights in the New Century, led by Dr. Elliott Currie, the distinguished Berkeley criminologist.  We are, indeed, fortunate to have him as our moderator.  I first ran across his writing some months ago, and was immediately certain that he would be the one to lead our discussion of this most timely, yet timeless, subject.  A Lecturer in Legal Studies at Berkeley (there is no longer a department of criminology there) and Senior Research Scientist at the Public Health Institute, Berkeley, he is, this year, a Visiting Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.  We look forward to his taking us on an interesting journey through some of the most poorly understood but hotly debated, and overwhelmingly important subject matter that we could be discussing.  So, welcome, Elliott.  We are yours.

1:2) 01-SEP-2001 02:51 Elliott Currie

Thanks for that introduction, Richard.  I'm delighted to be here and very much looking forward to our discussion.

I'd like to focus the discussion on the question of how we can build a criminal justice system for the new century that both protects us from serious crime and embodies a real commitment to human rights.  There is surely some tension, inevitably, between those two goals.  But, I'm convinced that we can do a much better job of balancing them than we are doing now.

Indeed, as we begin the new millennium, the state of criminal justice in America is hardly one we can be proud of.  The news isn't all bad; crime is down from its peaks of a few years ago, and that has meant a real improvement in the quality of life in some places.  But, we still suffer levels of violent crime that are far higher than those of every other advanced society and more closely resemble some of the most volatile parts of the developing world.  And this is true despite a thirty-year experiment in "getting tough" on crime.  The number of Americans behind bars has jumped sevenfold since the early 1970s, giving us the world's highest rate of imprisonment (we passed Russia in this respect not long ago), and we put our citizens to death with a frequency matched only by handful of authoritarian countries.  But, our homicide death rate, especially among the young, towers above that of every other industrial nation.

We have created a justice system that stands out as an anomaly in the developed world; and we have done so without thinking much about the consequences.  But, those consequences are profound, and they ripple out across every realm of American life.  The vast sums we've spent on warehousing offenders in a swollen prison system have been siphoned away from more constructive public purposes, notably education, child welfare, and health care.  Our stunning levels of incarceration have devastated whole communities and spawned what some have called a "prison generation" among young people of color (twenty-eight percent of black men in America will, at current rates, spend time in a state or federal prison).  As women have become the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, we have created a looming crisis of parentless children of inmates, the effects of which will be felt for years to come.  Internationally, the United States is increasingly seen as a serial violator of human rights because of the conditions in our jails and prisons and our sweeping use of the death penalty--especially on the young and the mentally retarded.

Can we change all this?  I think we can, and I think some encouraging stirrings of change are already evident in America, which I hope we will talk about a little down the road.  But, the obstacles are formidable.  There are plenty of Americans who are perfectly satisfied with the thrust of our recent criminal justice policies and, if anything, would like to see us do more of the same: build more prisons, lengthen sentences, send more children to adult courts, loosen what remains of restraints on the police, and execute more people, more quickly.  Even among people who are troubled about the growing harshness of justice in America, it's often assumed that this is a necessary trade-off: a price we must pay if we want to keep from being overrun by crime.  Is that true?  That is one of the questions I hope we will grapple with in the next few weeks.  What do you think?

1:3) 01-SEP-2001 16:28 Douglass Carmichael

This is such an important topic.  The existing situation makes many of us sick.  I have to remember with Newton who said, on seeing a condemned man pass through the street in a cart, "there but for the grace of God go I."

It's clear that the current system, rationalized in terms of bad behavior and threat to public peace, is really part of the system of distributing poverty and unemployment, and taking people off the voter roles.  It's a way of reducing competition for your child's future jobs.

We are starting to see the first cohort T-shirts "Class of 1999, Vacaville Prison".  What's negative will, just by numbers, turn positive in the culture of exclusion we currently practice.

What are the causes of crime?  So obvious that upstream investment beats downstream cost of consequences.

"There are bad people and good people and technology can protect the good from the bad.  Hey, and there are lots of markets here."

I'd compare it to a near criminal intent conversation which I was side bar to in New York a few years ago.  Three execs talking, "If you pay any of your employees more then 36k a year you are an idiot.  You should replace them with a kid, a person over seas, or a machine."

And we have the fact that I think the largest contributor to the lobbying for mandatory sentencing was the building industry.

There is a wonderful book by Jospeh Taintor called “The Collapse of Complex Societies”.  He argues that societies collapse because of overspending on infrastructure.  "Justice" is part of that cost, and it’s a double cost.  People don't go to jail for watching TV.  You need to be active and putting that amount of talent in jail is just socially self-defeating.

For me, personally, there is also the simple injustice of hurting another human being, and our unwillingness to face up to the obvious fact that their failure is our failure, pure and simple.

What to do?  First, we can't solve the problem if it is narrowly defined "what to do with criminals".  It must go larger - to the gestalt of the whole society.

When the press tells us that, "American worker productivity rose last month", that does not mean that each worker is not producing more.  It means that the same amount is being produced by fewer workers, because the others were fired.  And the whole system, now with increasing good information, forces us to take costs out everywhere, especially people costs.  Does this create the conditions of crime?  You bet.  And increasing crime and incarceration (you have to take the two together) is always an indication of revolutionary potential - and not a ‘nice’ revolution.

I have the awkward feeling that "the market has already discounted this”.  I mean that people have already included it in their calculations.  I think many people voted for Bush because they felt he would be more likely to call out the National Guard in a property emergency (echoes of the New York labor riots in the 1800's and the National Guard - I've forgotten the specific.).

It's the logic behind gated communities, Montana and Nantucket.

If it's already taken into account as a wave that we can't control, the American vision is dead; it's now them against us.  What can change it?  Conversations like this can.

End of soapbox.

1:4) 01-SEP-2001 17:08 Richard Farson

There is lots of food for thought in these opening comments by Elliott and Douglass, searching for the larger reasons for the disturbing crime picture in the US.

One aspect of it that has always interested me is that no matter how we protest, and how we insist on harsh policing (perhaps WHY we insist on harsh treatment), we seem to have a national love affair with crime.  We don't want it to happen to us, of course, but it very seldom does.  Even though we are one of the most violent nations in the world, the vast majority of Americans have never even witnessed a violent act--a shooting, stabbing, beating, rape, let alone been the victims.  (Obviously there are pockets of violence in our society where everyone witnesses it often.)  But we are reminded, just today, that Sioux City, Iowa averages only two murders a year.  Our experience with violent crime is largely vicarious, via television.  There is a lot of it to experience there, and we love watching it.  I'm told that the average high school senior has witnessed 240,000 acts of violence on TV - 40,000 of them murders.

More than that, we are fascinated by criminals.  We love repentant ex-offenders and enjoy hearing their stories.  Frank Sinatra seemed all the more sexually appealing because of his gangland connections.  Gangsters seem to have little difficulty getting girlfriends.  Whatcha think, Elliott?  Does a manageable amount of crime serve us Americans in some psychological way?  If we could press a button and eliminate crime, would Americans press it?  We know that members of the prison industry wouldn't, as Douglass points out, but would the average person?

1:5) 01-SEP-2001 21:19 Raymond Alden

Thank you, Elliott, for being here.  This is a subject that should provoke interesting ideas!

You mention the potential for tension between the ideas of protecting the public on the one hand and human rights on the other.  I suggest that this tension is nothing compared to that which exists between both of them and the public's perception of "deserved" punishment.  The idea of "Let the punishment fit the crime" is more fun in the Mikado than it is in our system of justice.

Douglass brings up the relevancy of our economic system.  Sooner or later, we'll have to take that into account, too, and better sooner than later.  The late Louis Kelso had thoughts about that worth exploring.

“If we could press a button and eliminate crime, would Americans press it?” (See 1:4)

That is a very interesting question, Dick.  I hope that will open up a whole line of questioning.  (Are we really going to try to deal with Criminal Justice in just ONE conference?)

With respect to our practice of sentencing, I have the feeling that the people fit the picture painted by some philosopher -- Santayana maybe? -- who spoke of "Having lost sight of the objective, they redouble their efforts".

1:6) 02-SEP-2001 22:09 Barry McCaffrey

Elliott, I'll be very interested in your thinking about this issue in the coming weeks...2 million prisoners at Fed-State-Local levels...$35 Billion per year...4000 + places of incarceration...many of our local jails and some State prisons are factories of despair and injustice and incredible danger.  Probably some 85% of those behind bars, according to CASA at Colombia, have a serious alcohol or drug abuse problem...few receive in prison treatment (7%)...very, very few have follow on adequate supervision (drug testing) or treatment.

The situation is a disaster...exacerbated by mandatory minimum sentencing and totally inadequate funding of the parole-probation system.

It is important that the discussion not lose sight of the reality that the prison system is jammed with the failures of our family system, our education system, our youth mentoring system...these folks are bad news and known to be a threat to their local community.  They end up arrested, charged, tried, and jailed in general after multiple offenses.  These local jails are the end of the line for society's failures...the option is not in my view whether to lock them up...or be angry at them for the harm they do...the question is...what do we do to create conditions where more of them have better structure, better education, better nutrition, better EXAMPLE from adults, and someone with authority who also acts like they care about them?

Tough...Boys and Girls Clubs, the WMCA Youth Program, DARE, Big Brother Big Sister, ...these are the heroes I see dealing with the challenges at community level.

1:7) 02-SEP-2001 23:45 John Craven

Sorry, I do not have time for this significant seminar, as I am actively developing environmentally sustainable habitats for coastal desert communities.  They make ideal prisons for rational and benign individuals currently incarcerated a la the settlement of Australia - but that is extraneous.  My only recommendation is to find some actions that are really doable without educating a non-educable public.

My recommendation is that we legalize marijuana and make it a substance that is mutatis mutandi identical with tobacco.  We can then release all of those imprisoned for marijuana, and at the same time we can get the new marijuana/tobacco industry to fund rehabilitation centers for those who have been incarcerated.

This will require a concentrated advertising effort to convince the public of the truism that tobacco and marijuana, in moderation, is, in fact, a healthy form of tranquilization.  (The new adds on the package say that if you stop smoking now that you will prevent long term damage.  Yes, indeed.  Forty pack years of cigarettes are fatal - twenty pack years are in the noise for tobacco related illness.  When the cigarette companies get this point across, and they are now working on it, they can sell a pack a day for twenty years before anyone heeds the warning.  So, let's legalize marijuana, making it tobacco, and let’s regulate tobacco so that it has minor effect of the health of the population.  (Oh, by the way, the major deleterious effect of cigarette smoke is the positive ions which can be eliminated by a small radioactive substance that puts out alpha radiation.  (Oh Horrors -radioactive? Not as bad as the sun)

1:8) 03-SEP-2001 19:17 Richard Farson

Elliott, you want to focus on the balancing of human rights with protection of the public.  I'm sure your idea that these two are in tension derives from the fact that totalitarian societies often have far less crime than do democracies.  There are, however, societies that enjoy considerable freedom and human rights but little violent crime.  Isn't that the case in Japan and Britain, for example?  Is it possible that in some cases rights and protections are not in opposition, but in harmony?  Perhaps the extension of human rights can sometimes actually reduce the amount of crime.  I once wrote a book advocating full constitutional protection for children, extending them the complete rights of citizenship, arguing that they should be treated as persons under the law.  I believe that if children were given the rights that adults enjoy they might be less the victims of crimes, and less likely to commit them.  Are freedom and crime inextricably linked?

1:9) 03-SEP-2001 23:07 Barry McCaffrey

John, you wish to discuss actions that are doable without educating the ignorant public?  Legalizing pot may be a tough sell.  Many of us would think that would be bad policy...some 2/3 of the public outright oppose this no matter how cutely the question is worded.  Dr David Smith, the Founder of the Haight-Asbury Free Clinic, believes that pot is a disaster for many young people...so does Dr Mitch Rosenthal, Founder of the Phoenix House (biggest non-profit drug treatment chain in the nation).

Lots of us agree that incarceration for simple possession of pot...particularly for first offense or young people is also bad policy.  The facts indicate that few people in the US are actually arrested, tried, and jailed for simple possession...in the Federal system...the average prosecution was for over 200KG's.

The problem of poly-drug abuse is not its illegality.  It’s the destructive impact it has on families, the work place, and adolescent development.  The secondary impact of violence and corruption is also severe.  There is little reason to think that legalizing these substances would reduce abuse...the greater the exposure rate to young people, the greater the adult chronic addiction.

We don't agree on this issue.

1:10) 03-SEP-2001 23:37 Richard Farson

Barry, you don't have to sell me on the possible harmful effects of pot.  I've seen them.  But where I get derailed on current policy is in the crime picture.  Smart people can disagree about whether or not legalization or decriminalization will actually reduce the abuse of these substances, but surely it would reduce associated crime, reduce the prison population, and reduce the harmful effects of incarceration, which are undoubtedly worse than the effects of pot, would it not?

1:11) 04-SEP-2001 02:48 Elliott Currie

Wow!  A lot of thoughtful and intriguing responses already, despite it being the Labor Day weekend--that's encouraging!

I'd like to jump into several of the conversations we've begun here.  First, I want to affirm Douglass Carmichael's point about the connection between the criminal justice system and the economy.  There is, indeed, a sense in which the policy of mass incarceration (which, by the way, everyone thus far seems to agree has been a bust) is "a way of reducing competition for your child's future jobs”.  There is now a small but intriguing body of research on how the prison boom has affected our unemployment rate, for example--some of the most intriguing is the work of the sociologist Bruce Western and his colleagues at Princeton.  Among other things, the research shows that the prison boom is one key reason why our jobless rate, on the surface, looks pretty good by comparison with that of many European countries.  We get to subtract a couple of million people from the labor force, and so they're not counted as unemployed.  Needless to say, this has pretty profound implications for how we think about the success of our economy in recent years in general.

Richard Farson raises the important issue of our "love affair" with crime--the sense that we may "need" our criminals in very fundamental ways.  There's a long tradition of thinking about this, mostly in sociology--I'd strongly recommend, in this regard, the classic book by the Yale sociologist Kai Erikson called ‘Wayward Puritans’, which discusses the role of "deviant behavior" in helping societies gain some sense of coherence and solidarity by excluding other folks.  Certainly, in the post-Willie Horton age, it's hard to deny that this cultural phenomenon plays a big role in our crime policy.

I agree with Richard that many people's experience with crime, at least serious crime, is vicarious.  But I'd caution against taking that point too far.  We really do have a violent crime problem in America, and one that distinguishes us from most other advanced industrial countries--though some are doing their best to catch up.  I'm struck by this often when I visit other countries; I remember, for example, walking late at night across much of inner-city Vancouver without worrying at all about getting attacked by someone, which is something that would never happen in a big American city.  Figuring out what this tells us about the causes of crime (and the remedies) is critically important if we want to get beyond the frustrating situation that Raymond Alden describes, of redoubling failed efforts.

And speaking of failed efforts, I think Barry McCaffrey's line about many of our jails and prisons being "factories of despair and injustice and incredible danger" is both powerful and all too true.  I'd push it one step further, to argue that they are increasingly 'factories' of crime in themselves--an old idea (Jeremy Bentham described prisons as "schools in which wickedness is taught") that is more and more relevant today as we cram more and more of those 'failures' behind bars but do less and less to help them have a reasonable chance of succeeding once they get out.  Which results in several hundred thousand mostly unprepared, mostly angry people being released to very inhospitable streets every year.  A recipe for disaster, indeed.

One bright spot in all this, in my view (though I tend to be incurably and perhaps irrationally optimistic about these matters) is that there are stirrings of change, at least with respect to the provision of drug treatment to prisoners.  In California, for example, we've significantly upped the percentage of inmates getting treatment.  Of course, we were starting from such a low base that almost any funding would have made a big improvement, and we still have treatment for only a fraction of those who could benefit from it.  But at least there is some evidence that legislators now "get it" about the folly of not treating folks when we have the chance.

One small quibble with Barry's strong discussion--my own sense is that recent research has cast considerable doubt on whether the DARE program really works; can we still think of that as a heroic program, or do we need to come up with something better?

I was going to ask for Barry's comments on John Craven's proposal that we legalize marijuana, but got them without asking.  Let me, for now, just add a couple of comments to an emerging discussion that I expect we'll return to from time to time.  One is that I have less confidence than Richard Farson does that legalization would necessarily reduce drug-related crime that much.  That's partly because a lot of the crime that's associated with drugs isn't really caused by the prohibition of drugs.  There's a great deal of research, for example, that suggests that a lot of the people who wind up dealing drugs, or using them heavily, were doing crime well before they got involved with drugs.  And a lot of them would probably still be doing crime even if their drugs were legal.  That's not to say there's no connection between the criminalization of drug use and crime--only that the connections are probably more complicated than many people on different sides of the legalization debate assume.

Well, this response is getting to be longer than I intended when I started--that's a tribute to the fact that there's a lot of meat to chew on in the comments so far.  I want to come back to some issues I've left out, including Richard's challenging question about the tension between crime control and human rights.  But let me mull that one over for a while and give others the floor.

1:12) 04-SEP-2001 14:09 John Craven

You guys have missed my point. Pot is indeed deleterious.

Alcohol is very physiologically devastating, but we do not have large numbers of people in jail for the manufacture distribution and sale of this regulated substance.  We do have a significant number of DUI inmates but that may be okay.

Coffee is physiologically devastating if you are addicted.  But we do not have large numbers of people in jail for the production distribution and sale of this basically unregulated substance and nobody is in jail for driving under the influence of coffee.

Tobacco is physiologically devastating if you smoke continuously for long periods of time.  It is not so bad if you stop for intervals which gives your body time to clean itself up.  But we do not have large numbers of people in jail for driving under the influence of tobacco.

Sugar is physiologically devastating.  We are becoming a nation of fat diabetics with a tremendous cost to our health system.  But we do not have large numbers of people in jail for driving under the influence of sugar.

Crystal meth is permanently devastating creating dangerous paranoids that should be institutionalized for the rest of their life.  We do not have a sufficient number of the people who manufacture crystal meth apprehended and institutionalized.

So, why don't we put pot in the same class as coffee, sugar, alcohol, tobacco? (and oxygen - a very toxic substance) (oh yes chocolate as consumed by some Mormons – deadly deadly deadly)

1:13) 04-SEP-2001 15:50 Douglass Carmichael

I agree with John.  And we could add Prozac and Ritalin.  2 million prescriptions of Ritalin a month?

But to me, the real casualty is the culture of danger and repressions and heavy measures not backed by reasonable argument.  The current drug policy undermines a culture of law, respect and reasonableness.  It undermines the apparent ability of adults to act sane and responsible. It undermines respect for a ruling class that punishes unevenly and without regard to the stresses of lower class life.

For example:

“Connecticut State Representative Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat who is chairman of the Connecticut House judiciary committee, found out that 9 out of 10 people in jail and prison in Connecticut for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, but that half of those arrested on drug charges are white.  Part of the problem, he said, is a Connecticut law that established a mandatory sentence for selling or possessing drugs within two thirds of a mile of a school, day care center or public housing project.  The result, Mr. Lawlor said, is that 90 percent of cities like Hartford or New Haven are within these areas, and so poor and minority people who, unlike whites, live in public housing projects in these areas end up in prison for any drug charge.  This is a clear case of how the law indirectly discriminates against the lower income people.”

1:14) 04-SEP-2001 15:55 Douglass Carmichael

I cited earlier Taintor's Collapse of Complex Societies.

The unwillingness to keep justice systems current and fair is a response to the logarithmically escalating real (unmet) cost of maintaining the principles of fair and quick judgment by peers.  This is a symptom of system collapse.

1:15) 04-SEP-2001 23:41 Raymond Alden

A year or two ago, I read somewhere about a prison -- I think it was in Minnesota or Wisconsin -- that was managed wisely.  Prisoners were taught, treated, kept busy in productive ways, etc.  The return rate for defective output was remarkably small.

Is this a case of our knowing what to do, but simply not doing it?

A Secretary of Education said a while back, just before a national conference, "Everything we need to know about improving our schools is already known -- by somebody, somewhere."  (That's not an exact quote.)

This is puzzling, indeed.  Simple arithmetic about the cost of prevention vs. the cost of cure should convince any thinking person that we are betting our money on the wrong horses.

1:16) 05-SEP-2001 00:25 Barry McCaffrey

Elliott, The DARE program has taken some strong criticism...I've read the dissenting viewpoints and think they are mostly ideological.  The course has been revised three times...the numbers look good to us...the program is immensely popular and expanding.  Some folks do not like the notion of police officers teaching this material. Older groups, 10th-12th grade, probably do better with other approaches.

1:17) 05-SEP-2001 17:08 Elliott Currie

Thanks, all, for your comments.  I think it's interesting that a lot of our discussion thus far has zeroed in on drug policy--interesting, though not terribly surprising, since drugs have driven so much of our criminal justice policy generally in recent years, and since so many Americans (clearly including US) feel very strongly, one way or another, about drugs.  A couple of remarks on the issues you've raised:

John Craven and Douglass Carmichael continue to stress the destructive impact of some anti-drug policies.  The Connecticut piece Douglass offered is especially troubling, and does strongly illustrate the uneven impact of drug enforcement across different social strata.

But let me be the devil's advocate for a moment on this.  A lot of people I know--including a great many cops--would say something like this: "Well, sure, most of our drug enforcement is concentrated in low income communities, and especially low income minority communities.  But that's where the biggest problem is, and that's where the law-abiding citizens are most worried and angry about drugs and drug dealing.  Sure, middle class kids deal cocaine too, but mostly indoors and in ways that don't threaten the whole social fabric of their neighborhoods.  In the inner city, drugs translate into pervasive violence and the virtual terrorization of whole communities.  Drug dealing near schools IS a very real problem in the inner city, because dealers target vulnerable kids and ruin their lives and futures, and those kids are also exposed to horrific levels of violence.  The laws are designed not to discriminate against these communities, but to protect them.  In fact, it would be highly discriminatory if we FAILED to take strong action against street dealing in these places, and just let these neighborhoods go down the tubes".

Comments?

Let me just add, along these lines, that we now have some important social experiments underway in changing the thrust of our drug policies.  Both Arizona and now California have passed laws mandating treatment rather than prison for low-level drug possession offenders.  California's Proposition 36, passed last year, and now being seriously implemented across the state, marks a major experiment in reorienting our enforcement policy towards minor drug offenders (it doesn't alter the way we deal with serious drug dealers).  Is this the sort of saner drug policy that John and Douglass would like to see?  Barry, what do you think about the California and Arizona initiatives?  (Barry, as an aside, I'll be very interested to see what hard empirical research tells us down the road about the effectiveness of the revised DARE program).

On a different, but related, note, Raymond Alden's point about the relative costs of prevention versus cure (actually, too often when it comes to crime we invest in NEITHER prevention nor cure) hits my own greatest frustration with our current approach to crime.  In answer to your question, yes: this is indeed a case of knowing what to do but not doing it.  To be sure, there are some things we need to know more about than we now do (how to work with serious violent offenders to fix what ails them is one example).  But we certainly know how to do a great deal more than we are now doing (Barry has already pointed to the stunning lack of drug treatment behind bars; that's a huge example of something we know how to do but aren't doing nearly enough of).  But there are other examples: intensive intervention with young offenders to keep them from going farther down the road to serious crime, and out of prison; intensive preschool help for at-risk kids; serious efforts to prevent child abuse, which for my money is the single most important immediate cause of violent crime.

The disconnect between what criminologists (and plenty of others) know and what legislators do--or what the public votes for--is, I think, one of the most troubling gaps in public policy today.  Question: how do we bridge it?  How do those of us who study these things do a better job of getting the message out?  Or is that the real problem?

1:18) 05-SEP-2001 20:29 Richard Farson

I think that getting the word out is the problem, at least to some extent.  That's what, with luck, we will be able to do with this forum.

I have never heard a politician say that he or she has just conferred with a group of criminologists, and intends to press for legislation based on what they have been learning.  They do that some with other scientists, but never with criminologists.  Don't feel bad, Elliott.  They don't consult psychologists either.

1:19) 05-SEP-2001 21:07 Richard Farson

Watching crime shows on TV, one might get the idea that the public, the police, the courts and the penal system work together to apprehend criminals and incarcerate them for the ultimate safety of the public.  As far as I can tell, that is a completely, and dangerously, erroneous picture.  Here's the way it looks to me:

Most crimes are not even reported, including serious ones.  One out of ten or twelve rapes is reported.  Many beatings are not reported.  Wives who sometimes initiate serious domestic violence tend not to be reported because the husbands are embarrassed to have been beaten up by their wives.  Some murders are not reported.

Of those reported, the vast majority is never solved.  Only one out of 150 burglaries leads to an arrest.  By and large the police never even try to solve them.  I'm told that only one in four murders leads to a murder conviction.  Detective work of the sort we associate with Sherlock Holmes or crime labs on TV accounts for almost no solutions of crimes.  Detectives are almost totally dependent upon informants, and indeed have to keep a criminal network of them supported in order to catch others.

Of those crimes that lead to an arrest, less than half lead to conviction, and of those convicted, less than half are actually incarcerated.

Of those incarcerated, most will serve only a few years, and be released.  I believe the average time served for serious crime is about three years, and until recently when mandated sentences, "three strikes" laws, and such were enacted, the average life sentence was only about seven years, as I recall.

I can only conclude that what this means is that the vast majority of criminals, even some of the most dangerous ones, are at large, among us all the time.  So much for the myth of public safety.

Add to that the fact that even among prisoners and prison guards, only about 10 or 15 percent of the current prison population is considered in any way dangerous to society.  We also have the fascinating paradox that when police go on strike, crime is reduced.

So my question is, how much more dangerous would it be if we just dismantled the whole system--disarmed police, emptied the prisons, etc.???  Might we even be safer?  Just asking.  Don't get mad.

1:20) 05-SEP-2001 21:44 Barry McCaffrey

Dick, the evidence is fairly clear that the legalization of pot would increase use substantially among young people, eye surgeons, etc.  About 5% of the population is now ‘past month users’.  Might go up to 10%...similar to abuse rates for alcohol, which is the most devastating chronic rate of all.  The total impact is harmful to a number of social and medical concerns.  A significant percentage of adolescents (perhaps 15%) end up with serious substance abuse challenges...lots of other side effects are of concern...cancer, drugged driving accidents, dependence and loss of motivation, etc.  NIDA has funded solid research by Colombia, U Michigan, UCLA, U Penn Medical College...worth examining the evidence.

Agreed...few of us believe in criminal prosecution for simple possession...re-read my answer.  However, the facts are fairly clear...our drug court system (now more than 800 drug courts nation-wide) and treatment in general work more effectively when there is a penalty to coerce treatment.  In addition, the facts are that very, very few people in the US are ever arrested, prosecuted and jailed for simple possession or for a first offense...this is the refrain from the legalization proponents...it also is largely BS.

Many of us believe high social disapproval of pot use lowers exposure and is good for society.  It is legitimate to have a different view...but about 2/3 consistently support keeping pot as a schedule I drug.

1:21) 05-SEP-2001 22:10 Barry McCaffrey

John, you have been such a brilliant scientist...your comments do not reflect the thoughtful nature I know you possess.  Heroin, methamphetamine, and poly drug abuse in general IS NOT FUNNY...it’s not actually like sugar, coffee, and oxygen.  You may wish to visit one of the drug/alcohol treatment centers in your community...sheer misery for those involved directly and their families and fellow employees.  NIDA now has an excellent grasp of the chemistry of addiction and brain function.  I'll try to get a decent explanation on this net from Dr. Alan Leshner, who is a brilliant scientist in the neurochemistry of the brain.  These dependant, chronically addicted people are sick, dangerous to themselves and others, and a heartbreak to their mothers and Dads.  They end up dead from murder, malnutrition, AIDS, STD's and TB.  They almost always have severe associated mental health problems...they end up squandering their human potential...alienated from their families, unemployed, they chemically cannot feel affection or love the way they did before they altered the chemistry of the reward pathway of the brain.  They are really, really in despair at their situation and desperate to end the chaos of their life.  Fortunately, they respond to science based drug treatment at better rates than current cancer treatment.

Your comments are from my experience insensitive to the suffering of more than 5 million Americans who are chronic addicts to illegal drugs - and 10+ million abusing alcohol.  There are lots of us who are also very bright and serious who believe we can make a difference.  The tone of your comments seems to imply you don't give any respect to a different viewpoint.

By the way...the Cuban Cigars are a concern...the only drug you cannot get a lab rat to self-administer is tobacco smoke...they simply aren't that stupid.

1:22) 06-SEP-2001 02:37 Richard Farson

Barry, I never minimize the harmful effects of the substances you mention.  I just have all along felt that we should not criminalize their use.  Given the terrible effects of alcohol, which leads to many more deaths than pot, and destroys many more relationships, would you think it wise to criminalize it?  Again?

1:23) 06-SEP-2001 13:30 Douglass Carmichael

First, "and especially low income minority communities. But that's where the biggest problem is, and that's where the law-abiding citizens are most worried and angry about drugs and drug dealing."  But why is the problem there, and for whom?  Why do middle class people care about what goes on (as they perceive it) in poor communities?  What do people in poor communities want (now there is a great approach)?

In other words, the damage done to 15% by drugs may be less bad than the damage done to the legal and justice systems in a society that no longer believes that law is fair.

Second, we need to balance the truly horrible effects of drugs with the truly horrible effects of criminalization.

Barry, I take it that your tone towards John is also part of the discussion, and worth noting.  I see it as an attempt to narrow the range of the discussion.  My own sense is that the solution to the drug problem probably lies way outside the normal boundaries of the discussion.  And may point to a much larger problem of which the current situation is just a hint.

For example, in a techno-centered society, how do we regulate and explore our increasing ability to deal with altered mental states?  Drugs affect the capacity for reason, but anti-depressants make us emotionally stupid and take away dreams and lead to increased impotence.  So, we can take Prozac and Viagra and alcohol and stay on the job and in the relationship.  And this is just the beginning of legal medication.

1:24) 06-SEP-2001 13:52 Douglass Carmichael

Correction from an earlier post from NYT August 19:

www.nytimes.com/2001/08/19/health/children/19RITA.html

"Last year, doctors wrote almost 20 million monthly prescriptions for the stimulants (Ritalin and look alikes)."

1:25) 06-SEP-2001 20:00 Raymond Alden

Dick says: "I have never heard a politician say that he or she has just conferred with a group of criminologists, and intends to press for legislation based on what they have been learning."

That will continue to be the case until newspaper publishers and editors are brought into the act.  When what the criminologists say gets editorial attention, then the politicians will start to be responsive.  They live and die on the basis of what the public is reading and hearing.

1:27) 07-SEP-2001 11:58 Douglass Carmichael

This morning's Village Voice:

“Dissident Scientists Question the Ban on Ecstasy - The People's Prozac”

by Carla Spartos

Consider the two dosing lines for America's young people—the one outside the club and the one in the school nurse's office.  At the door to raves, kids stand with Ecstasy pills on their tongues, waiting for the weekly surge of empathy and good feeling that comes from the combination of hallucinogen and amphetamine.  For this rush, which was legal before 1985, they risk jail terms and the loss of student aid.

But every day outside the nurse's office, roughly 2 million kids line up for their daily dose of stimulant, very likely Adderall, a prescription amphetamine that is quickly replacing Ritalin as the drug of choice for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  For this high, which is said to help learning, teachers and parents lend encouragement.

1:28) 07-SEP-2001 14:10 Walter Anderson

Interesting -- and I think appropriate -- that so much of this discussion is about drug issues.  The simple fact, as I believe should be obvious, is that the world is up to its ass in mind-altering chemicals, that if anything more are on the way, that there is no such thing as being "drug-free" (I'm having my second cup of coffee at the moment) and that we all have an enormous task of social learning about which are harmful to whom, under what circumstances, which are beneficial, who gets to decide, who decides who decides.

1:29) 07-SEP-2001 14:18 Richard Farson

Elliott, I put my conclusion that most criminals are at large into this conference because I would like to know what trade offs you are talking about when you indicate that to have protection we may need to sacrifice human rights.  As I see it, we have very little actual protection now (although I would be the first to complain if when I picked up the phone to call the police, no one answered).  Much of what we call protection is counter-productive (prisons, policing).  So what, beyond giving up the debatable 2nd amendment right to bear arms (which would doubtless reduce homicides and suicides), what rights are vulnerable?  Due process?  Free speech?  Protection from search and seizure?  Would losing these rights actually make any difference to our ultimate safety?  What really happens in a place like China or Japan (or as you say, Vancouver, which by the way is now 60% Chinese) where one can walk the streets in safety, and return to find your wallet or camera where you left it?

1:30) 07-SEP-2001 14:55 Douglass Carmichael

I found myself dreaming about this last night.  Seems that we are actually building a fairly comprehensive "system" of thought here.  In the dream, the issue was "isn't hurting someone always a projection from powerful personal dynamics, to which violence is the cleansing?  And that we hurt someone, doesn't that arouse in us a feeling that something is wrong?”  I am still with Socrates: no one does evil on purpose; it's the best course of action from their perspective, with their humanity on the line in their situation.  Part of what I think we learned from Wilson and Versailles has to be: don't put people in bad situations, or they will react badly.

Part of the drug/poverty scene is, I think, a part of the larger issue of how a society distributes its poverty (not wealth, which is easier, because saying "you win" does not require the justification that "you lose" does.)

1:31) 07-SEP-2001 16:32 Elliott Currie

Well, now!  Once again, a lot to grapple with here.  I want to pick up several threads that have emerged in the discussion, and, with any luck at all, weave at least a couple of them together.

First, on the drug issue.  We are still, so to speak, on drugs--not surprising, as Walter Anderson points out, since we are up to our whatevers in drugs of one kind or another most of the time (nice to hear you again, Walt).

Before I get serious about this, I can't resist a small anecdote; once, I was giving a talk about drugs at a big conference that had lots of law enforcement types in attendance.  The fellow who introduced me pointed out that I had just published a book on drug policy (true) and that I had worked in drug treatment on the 'front lines' myself (also true) and that I was currently studying kids who were seriously into the drug culture (also true).  He summed this up by saying "indeed, it appears that Dr. Currie has spent the better part of the last ten years on drugs".

(I ain't saying anything about the truth of THAT...)

Let me first jump into the debate that's emerged between Barry on the one hand and John, Douglass, and perhaps Richard on the other.  My suspicion is that beneath the surface disagreement there may be more common ground on this issue than meets the eye.  It's true that Barry emphasizes more the harms that drugs themselves do, while others emphasize the harms that the drug war does (Douglass makes this quite explicit in his comment about the damage done to the justice system and society by the drug war being more significant than the impact of drugs on some, probably relatively small, percentage of people).

But I don't see John or Douglass or Richard ignoring the negative impact of hard drugs, and I don't see Barry simply being a cheerleader for locking everybody up.  So my sense is that all of us would acknowledge that there are real tensions here, and difficult social choices that need to be made.

In that regard, I want to return to my query about the role of law enforcement in dealing with drug dealing in the inner city for a minute, because I think it raises some of those genuinely tough questions.  Douglass asks why the 'middle class' should care what happens with drugs in the inner city--but my point was that it's inner-city residents themselves who are most upset and up in arms about drugs in their communities and most demanding of action by cops and courts against drugs.  And that's an important reason why we get the pattern of drug law enforcement that we do.

So--don't those folks have a right to be protected against drug dealers in their front yard?  Don't they have a right to expect that the rest of us will invest in sufficient police presence to keep the dealers away from their kids?  By the same token, though, does recognizing that right mean we should support Draconian sentences for those in the community who are doing the dealing?

It seems to me, in short, that there aren't really simple answers here, and that we are faced with the need to balance different and sometimes contradictory social aims if we want to create a drug policy for this century that's halfway intelligent.  Would you all agree?

(Barry, a quibble here: I don't think it's BS to say that we put a lot of minor drug offenders behind bars.  In California, before Proposition 36, we routinely had several thousand prisoners sentenced for simple possession.  Now it's true that some of those were pled down from more serious charges, and some of them, doubtless, were serious offenders whom we just happened to snare on this charge.  But in the other direction, a significant proportion of the people we imprison for dealing--say, for "possession for sale"--are really very small fry indeed.  All of this costs our state in the nine figures every year, so it's not a minor use of our public resources).

On that issue of "balancing", let me take on Richard's question about what I mean by a "tension" between crime control and human rights--I'm glad you've persevered on that one, Richard!  I think that we could always squelch much more crime than we do, if we were sufficiently ruthless and amoral in our approach--including, notably, some of that crime which, as you point out, we never get our hands on at all because it never gets into the system.

Let me give you an example.  Suppose you were to appoint me the country's evil crime czar (not that there's anything wrong with being a czar, Barry...) and tell me I've got to cut street crime by, say, a third in the next few years, and you don't care how I'd do it, as long as I don't do anything that would be "soft" on crime.  Well, knowing what I know about who's most likely to commit street crimes, and at what ages, one of my first moves might be to preventively detain vast numbers of kids from especially high-risk populations, at least until they got to be about 30 or so.  Put 'em to work out in the boondocks somewhere and don't let them out till they've 'matured out' of crime, as some criminologists put it.

Well, I'll bet you that would cut the crime rate.  Right now we can't do it, because it violates some civil liberties (though I think some recent criminal justice initiatives--like California's 'anti-gang' Proposition 21--have some elements of this vision).  Indeed, some local and state anti-gang initiatives in California can put a kid away for a long time for just walking down the street with their cousin who some sheriff’s department says is a "gang member'.  Can you cut youth crime that way?  Some people say so.  Does it undercut fundamental human rights?  I think so.

So there's a tension.  My own view, as you've probably gathered, is that we've tilted too far in the direction of chipping away at rights in the name of crime control.  But I teach a class full of cops who all feel the opposite.

Richard, your mentioning the Second Amendment is very apropos here.  It's interesting that many people view the tension between individual liberties and state action very differently when it comes to guns than when it comes to drugs.  Many of the same folks who don't want the state messing with their drugs are quite happy to have the state messing with other peoples' guns.  Is there a bit of a contradiction here?

My own approach would be to be quite tough on guns; I don't like them and, though I tend to think the issues are more complicated than some gun control proponents do, I believe that restricting peoples' freedom to own guns would indeed help to lower the level of violent crime in America.  So, there again, yes: there's a tension between crime control and individual rights.  Forget whether or not the Second Amendment really enshrines any individual right to gun ownership (which, as Richard says, is debatable); it's a freedom that many people, including lots of my students, cherish.  Would I take some of it away in the service of reducing violence?  Yep.

A word on the issue of the gap between what criminologists know and what legislators do.  Raymond Alden suggests that legislators will pay attention to criminologists when the media gets on board and pushes the ideas that the criminologists are pushing.  I wish that were true, but I remember several situations in which, here in California, BOTH the majority of newspaper editors AND 95 percent of my colleagues agreed that some proposed anticrime legislation was dreadful and misguided--but the legislators pushed it and the voters passed it anyway.  That happened with Prop. 21, and the "three strikes" law in 1994.  My sense is that legislators will only change their ways on these issues when enough voters are educated and mobilized to press for a new direction, so that legislators are faced with changing or losing the next election.

So--how we do that best--how we educate and mobilize large numbers of ordinary folks--strikes me as the most crucial question for the future of 21st century criminal justice policy; one that I hope we'll return to in this forum, because it's a genuinely tough one to figure out.

(Richard, on the issue of politicians never sitting down with criminologists (or psychologists), I'm happy to say that the California Attorney General is in fact sitting down with a group of us this year to talk about crime policy.  I can't guarantee that this will result in huge changes or even small ones, but it's a welcome sign.  But there I go being optimistic again.)

1:32) 07-SEP-2001 17:04 Donald Straus

I perhaps shouldn't cut across forums, but I am impressed with the similar problems that you here are treating so well and the problems that are producing less heat and passion in the Democracy sessions of Forum 1.

To mention just one: there has been a lively exchange in Forum 1 about the pros and cons of urging more citizens to participate in "governance".  In Elliott's #31 just above, he says: "So--how we do that best--how we educate and mobilize large numbers of ordinary folks--strikes me as the most crucial question for the future of 21st century criminal justice policy; one that I hope we'll return to in this forum, because it's a genuinely tough one to figure out."

As our two Fora move on towards a wrap-up, perhaps we should try a cross-exchange of ideas on these two closely related questions.

Increasingly, I think, this reborn WBSI will need to struggle with the problem of utilizing in-depth specialized wisdom with some newer, (and perhaps computer-aided) skills of integrating them with the generalized wisdom needed for wise decisions.

1:33) 07-SEP-2001 19:28 Douglass Carmichael

Simple question: Is "it's inner-city residents themselves who are most upset and up in arms about drugs in their communities and most demanding of action by cops and courts against drugs.  And that's an important reason why we get the pattern of drug law enforcement that we do."  True?

If we look at patterns of voting, inner city is much more liberal.  If you look at inner city attitudes (such as during the Simpson trial) there is overwhelming sense that the system is not fair.  I would think inner city people want safety, but not at the cost of fairness.  They want cops on the beat, not beat up kids and kids in jail.

1:34) 09-SEP-2001 16:07 Barry McCaffrey

Dick, yes, I believe Schedule I drugs should be illegal to produce, sell or use.  It helps the prevention and treatment systems to work.  Very few people in America actually go to jail for simple possession of personal use drugs.  The potential penalties do, without question, support the Drug Court System.

No, I do not believe that alcohol which is a mildly addictive drug.... which is legal and culturally accepted.... should be made illegal.  Yes, I know it is the most widely abused drug in America.  Having a similar huge number on methamphetamines would not be social balance...it would be an increased policy nightmare.

Basically, I am supportive of strong prevention programs, science based treatment for the addicted, and high levels of strong social disapproval of drug and alcohol abuse.

1:35) 10-SEP-2001 18:06 Elliott Currie

The fact that we've opened several different lines of discussion in the last few days reminds me of just how wide and encompassing a subject "criminal justice" is. Which may indeed be part of the reason why I got involved in the crime business, so to speak, in the first place: there's a lot to chew on.

Barry has opened a new thread #2 on "Thinking about drug abuse", and perhaps we can shift most of our ongoing drug discussion over there--at least for the present, though I'd like to bring it all back together before we end. Before doing that, however, let me respond to Douglass' question, about whether inner-city folks really are demanding strong action against drugs in their communities. I think the answer is yes--but that's complicated by the other reality that Douglass correctly points to, that the same people are also more likely than the rest of the population to be critical of the unfairness of the justice system. My sense is that many people in poor inner-city communities now regard the system as failing them in both directions: that is, it isdiscriminatory in the harshness with which it comes down on minority offenders, AND it fails to protect them adequately from violence and drug dealing. That's one reason why I think that achieving a sound and fair drug policy is such acomplicated isue--as Richard says, a genuine "predicament."How you manage to protect folks fromthe predatory actions of people in their midst--while at the same time avoiding the creation of a Gulag that warehouses greater and greater numbers of people, many of whom are likely to be their neighbors, cousins, children--is a tricky question, and one that I think is at the center of the crisis of American criminal justice today.

But on to two other, related, issues for the moment. Donald Strauss' jumping in from the other forum is most welcome. I'm convinced that there are a number of common themes that underlie many of the most pressing issues of our time, whether it's governance or criminal justice, or health care, or welfare/poverty, or what have you. And one of those is surely how we maximize the quality of public discussion about these and other issues--more generally, how we develop a public culture that manages to marry real expertise with broad dissemination of ideas, that raises the level of public understanding and engagement and shrinks the very unhappy gap between narrow experts anda public that's a lot less informed than most of us would like. I'm delighted that WBSI is tackling this big issue head-on, and I think we should indeed come back together toward the end of these fora and see what common themes we've managed to stir up.

Speaking of tackling things head on, I'd like to press a little on the issue of guns, which I raised a couple of days ago in response to a mention by Richard about the Second Amendment.

When you look around the world at rates of violent crime, and especially rates of homicide, it's impossible not to be struck by the startling prominence of the US among other advanced societies when it comes to gun related crime. I have before me some figures from a US Public Health Service study published in 1998 on gun deaths around the world (This is gun deaths from suicide and acidents as well as homicide). In the mid-1990s the US rate of gun deaths was about 14 per 100,000 population per year. Close behind were Brazil and Mexico with about 13 per 100,000 and Estonia with 12. Down at the other end was England with 0.41 per 100,000; South Korea at 0.12; and Japan at 0.05. That is, unless I am even more numerically challenged than I thought, the US rate of gun deaths is about 285 times that of Japan, 35 times that of England.

So it seems clear that we can't separate America's violent crime problem from the question of what to do about guns. But what to do? There are plenty of Americans who feel that regulating guns more than we now do would violate fundamental individual rights, and many of them believe those rights are enshrined in the Constitution. And most would go on to argue that more gun control wouldn't much help lower the crime rate anyway, because guns aren't the problem. Comments?

1:36) 10-SEP-2001 23:45 Douglass Carmichael

On guns, important issue. After the Bush election I realized i hardly knew anyone who voted for him, so i started reading right wing press and news groups. What has struck me is how true to certain kinds of early principles they are, like Shays’ Rebellion. These folks really believe that central government is a threat, and taking away their guns castrates them.

If we look at world gun violence, and realize that the US is the second major exporter of arms, and that outside the sanitized industrial nations, guns are very common, violence is very common, and there is no control.

The hard question is, is taking away guns brining us closer to internal peace and justice, or is it defanging potential opposition when things get really tough?

I find myself very conflicted. I think the second amendment did relate to militias and not to individual ownership, and i don't like guns and prefer to live in societies without. But we need to work much harder, us liberals, to understand the fear in much of the right, and honor the historical sources from which it, and its supposed remedies, came. [Shays, Daniel (1747–1825) US soldier, probably born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA. During the American War of Independence (1775–83) he served against the British, and was commissioned. In 1786 he led an insurrection by the farmers in W Massachusetts against the US government, which was imposing heavy taxation and mortgages. After raiding the arsenal at Springfield, MA, the insurrectionists were routed at Petersham (1787), and Shays was condemned to death, but pardoned (1788).]

1:38) 12-SEP-2001 01:20 Richard Farson

The position taken by most of our leaders is that the evil people who committed the terrorist acts will be found and brought to justice, but they also speak as if there will be swift and fierce retaliation.So it isn't going to be dealt with as a matter of criminal justice, apparently, but of war.

And speaking of giving up our human rights...the calls for increased security (for some reason people don't get it that it would have been impossible to have protected against what happened today) will bring us much closer to a police state.

1:39) 12-SEP-2001 19:54 Elliott Currie

I think Douglass' point is very important. There is a tendency in some quarters to think of everyone who sticks up for the idea of a right to gun ownership as some sort of raving nut. But that doesn't fit my own experience at all. I have plenty of students at the University of California, for example, who are quite progressive on many issues but also think that people ought to able to own guns as long as they use them responsibly. I don't like guns myself and would like to see more stringent controls on them-but I agree that if we are to accomplish that, we're going to have to do a better job of understanding the (often complex) opposition among some folks to gun controls, and also a better job of explaining and convincing those who don't already agree with us.

Again, I have to say I'm often struck by the similarities that often emerge in the language we use, and the principles we invoke, in debates about guns and debates about drugs. In both cases, for example, those against too much state regulation say that the vast numbers of ordinary people involved in the behavior (owning guns or possessing drugs) shouldn't be restricted because of the bad or irresponsible behavior of a few. In both cases, too, critics of too much regulation point to the unfortunate side effects of state efforts--like the growth of black markets and the criminalization of large numbers of people who would otherwise not be involved with the criminal justice system. Yet the critics of drug prohibition often tend to support gun regulation. Food for thought here, I think.

Richard, I share your worries about the impact of this tragedy on the maintenance of human rights, in this country and abroad. I worry that there will be a search for the quick security fix-which a) probably won't work and (b) will divert us from the much harder project of figuring out how to address the roots of terrorism--economic, social, cultural--a genuinely tough task and one that I think we have shied away from confronting on the level of seriousness it calls for.

1:40) 12-SEP-2001 21:13 Richard Farson

How was it that England, after their own Columbine type disaster, was able to outlaw guns, and we cannot?Are we freer?

Elliott, your comparing the attitudes of those of us who want to decriminalize drug possession and criminalize gun possession with those who want the reverse, is telling indeed.What to do?

1:41) 13-SEP-2001 06:29 Eleanor Goldstein

Good Morning, Your discussions are interesting and provacative.However, my major concerns in the justice system are the injustices within the system.Specifically, false accusations and the unintended consequences of plea bargaining.They say you can tell an innocent in jail from a guilty, by who has the longer sentence.The innocent, who refuses to confess to something he who she did not do in order to get a lighter sentence, has a longer sentence.In addition, I have spent ten years researching writing and speaking about false memories and how the court system has reacted to hysteria and imprisoned many people on the basis of dream interpretation and other equally ridiculous testimony, and extended the statute of limitations to allow testimony corrobrated by therapists, regarding so-called repressed memories.I know of hundreds of people in jail or under house arrest, with little substantial evidence against them.You may know that Dorothy Rabinowitz received a Pulitzer prize for her articles in the Wall Street Journal regarding such cases.Is anyone interested in these injustices?Also, another issue is false confessions, which is being addressed by Dr. Richard Ofshe, at Berkley.Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, at Washington State is considered the expert on false memories, and after much controversy and threats to her, has received recognition from the American Psychological Association. Tens of thousands of people are being falsely accused of horrendous behavior that they did not commit and many languish in jail or under house arrest. I've written three books and many articles on the subject.I will forward information if anyone is interested.

1:42) 13-SEP-2001 11:33 Donald Straus

What we need in times like these is some vehicle for citizen discussion that minimizes some of our cultural habits for decision making, e.g.:

Exchanges of adversarial ideas Sound bite discussion TV "talking heads" rather than facilitated discussion similar to this space.

We are trying to nove in this direction in Forum 1, but you, Elliott, are actually doing it here. Congratulations.Any ideas on how to do this with millions with hundreds of different cultural preferences instead of here with a few with more or less similar cultural preferences??

1:43) 15-SEP-2001 14:25 Raymond Alden

One useful step, I think, would be to back up a bit and consider the objective.Why do we put people in prison?

Revenge is an unworthy motive.Protection of those NOT in prison does not require that those inside be treated in some particular way -- only that they remain inside.Once we have put them inside, then economy becomes a consideration.What treatment is cheaper, in the long run?

The same logic applied to terrorists, by the way, would cause one to look long and hard for the motivation, and try to understand it.

1:44) 15-SEP-2001 14:29 Richard Farson

I fear that we are not only addressing our response to the criminal acts against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon without regard to the deeper social and economic issues involved, but we have escalated beyond criminal justice to war.Is there any possibility that this can still be treated as a matter of criminal justice?

1:45) 15-SEP-2001 14:35 Richard Farson

Ray, your question assumes a pretty clear relationship between putting people in prison, and public safety. My earlier comment on that was meant to show that the relationship is minimal at best.

Unless we understand and work with the motivation for terrorism, we have no chance of eradicating it.As a matter of historical fact, we have no chance of eradicating it in any case.Nor should we desire to eradicate it completely.

1:46) 16-SEP-2001 17:53 Douglass Carmichael

Eleanor's entry just stunned me. I can speculate about unfairness, but I hear a voice of someone who has come closer and sees it as a profoundly unfair mess. Why do we tolerate it?My guess is, we look at the costs involved in doing justice with real justice, and known instinctively we can’t go there. In the back of our minds maybe we sense that education and opportunity would help upstream, but know that the jobs are not going to be there.

In words, we are at war with our own people. Such a society cannot long endure. I think there is some parallel with the current international situation. We avoided rebuilding Afghanistan, and could have saved the previous government and not abandoned those we supported in the cold war. We could have done more in Russia than send in super-capitalist exploiters who bought everything they could, like the Siberian Forests.

Happy times are equitable times (See David Fischer The Long Wave), and we have all watched, and mostly benefited, from the slow trickle up of wealth hands into narrower

A friend was going off to school board meeting and saw his neighbor standing there and said “Are you coming?” “No, not interested.” “Why, its important for our kids?” “No, I’m pulling my daughter out and send her to private school next year.” “Why, it’s been a good school?” “Well she is growing up now and I don’t want her to marry the kinds of kids that are there you know, there are too many of them,.”

1:47) 16-SEP-2001 22:05 Raymond Alden

Dick says, "your question assumes a pretty clear relationship between putting people in prison, and public safety."

My answer: Yes, it does, at a basic, fundamental level.The loss of that relationship in our current experience is a result of how we treat prisoners.Back up to the simple case, Dick:If I am attacked, or burgled, or whatever, the first requirement is that someone come to my assistance.The second is that the perpetrator be prevented from repeating that bahavior on others.

Now go on from there.You may ultimately seek to counsel him or her, but the FIRST step has got to be constraint.Does it not?

1:48) 16-SEP-2001 23:52 Richard Farson

Ray, the point of my earlier comment was that the system fails almost completely to do what you ask of it. We constrain very few of those who are committing the crimes, even though we incarcerate more than almost any other nation, and our prisons are full. Of course I agree that the system should operate to protect us, but currently it does not do a very good job of that.My guess is that Elliott could describe a much more effective system, but criminologists never seem to be able to sell it to politicians.

There are two findings from criminology that I sort of know about that would make a huge difference in our safety.The first is to do away with large prisons.The late Theodore Newcomb, who was dean of American social psychologists and a Fellow of WBSI, did a study showing that when we incarcerate prisoners in facilities that contain no more than about 18 inmates, rehabilitation is genuinely possible.In the large prisons that house thousands it has largely been given up as a goal.

The other finding is that if we tailor the nature of the sentence and the treatment for a convicted criminal to the individual case on the basis of criminologists' research, we can indeed have a rehabilitating system, and therefore a much safer society.Perhaps Elliott can comment on that, and put some flesh on those bones. Criminologists know a lot about what works and what doesn't. But you can see how far away we are from a safer society when you try to imagine the politicians shifting gears in those fundamental ways.

1:49) 17-SEP-2001 03:42 Elliott Currie

Well, we have several crucial lines of inquiry running at once over the past couple of days--testimony again, I think, to the complexity of this broad area of "criminal justice" and the depth of our feelings about the range of issues involved. Let me try to speak to each of these lines of thought in turn.

First, some thoughts on Richard's question about firearms and England--why did the British manage to outlaw guns for all practical purposes after Dunblane--their Columbine--and we can't? I don't think it's because we're "freer"--if anything, the opposite; I think our inability to move on this issue has partly to do with the stranglehold over policy that's exerted by the gun industry in the persona of the National Rifle Association--a case of the power of money trumping freedom and indeed the popular will, which tends to be far more flexible on guns than many people realize.

That said, there are also deep cultural differences in attitudes toward guns that are longstanding in the two countries. A British sociologist who was also a very good friend of mine, the late Ian Taylor, wrote on this issue, describing the ways in which a pervasive antipathy to guns in English culture helped pave the way for what may soon be, as he put it, a "gun free" society. The rejection of the gun in England, importantly, extends to the authorities. This is a country where the police rarely carry guns and where guns are never seen inside prisons--in stark contrast to the US, especially where I live.

My own feeling is that this is a very crucial factor in the creation ofbroader anti-gun culture--the refusal of those in power to use guns routinely to solve problems becomes a sort of societal role model, teaching those attitudes to the population as a whole. In the US, the cycle works the other way. Every law enforcement agency, down to your local campus cops, is armed to the teeth and not at all averse to actually shooting people. That sends a message, too,which is not lost on the populace, notably including the young.

Eleanor Goldstein (welcome!) raises the important issue of the great injustice caused by false memories being deployed to put people behind bars on the flimsiest of evidence. At the risk of sounding like I'm hammering away at my own angle on these issues, I think this raises again the question of a tension between justice and human rights that surfaces over and over again. For example, it's in the area of child abuse that some of the most troubling examples of the phenomenon Eleanor mentions have taken place, with lots of people being incarcerated, and their lives perhaps ruined, as a result of false accusations. But for a long time, we probably erred in the other direction, with the vast majority of genuine cases of abuse of children rarely resulting in punishment or even entering the criminal justice system at all. My point is that there'sbalance here between aggressively going after these crimes and defending the rights of those accused of them--it's a difficult balance to achieve, and I don't think we've achieved it yet.

Donald Strauss raises again the crucial question of how we manage to develop a dialogue on these issues (and others) that preserves the seriousness and complexity of the issues, and does so in a more diverse set of cultures than those of us here represent. I think this is a question we'll need to return to more than once, and I'd like especially to revisit it toward the end of this forum. But for now a couple of points.I am convinced that it is indeed possible to have the kind of broad-based discussion Donald hopes for. I've seen something like it happen in the flesh, so to speak, in teaching large college classes with 150 or so students of widely diverse backgrounds and beliefs. The key, I think, is pretty simple--though not so easy in practice: it has to do with treating everyone with respect, seeing to it that they feel safe in expressing a range of opinions, and trying to create a culture of discussion that emphasises the importance of providing solid evidence for one's views. If you provide all of that, in my experience people turn out to be both surprisingly civil and surprisingly thoughtful in talking about even the most heated issues.

The discussion raised by Richard and Raymond Alden about the role of prisons and of rehabilitation is a critical one, and gets to the heart of the state of criminal justice in the US today, in my view. What happens to people once we put them in prison is indeed the key--not only to whether prison is any use for public safety, but also whether it is a reasonably decent social institution or one that routinely subverts fundamental conceptions of human rights. It's clear that, as of now,very little that's good happens to people in the jails and prisons, and much that is very bad indeed. The result is that an awful lot of people come out of prison worse than they went in, which is obviously counterproductive in terms of public safety--so much so that by now, it's not too much to say that the prison system has become an important cause of crime in its own right (much crime, in that sense, now represents an iatrogenic disorder, as they say in the medical business).

At the very least, prison rarely does much if anything to address the underlying problems that so many offenders bring with them--addiction, mental illness, lack of skills (for a powerful and troubling depiction of this in the case of mental illness, I recommend the book Prison Madness by the psychiatrist Terry Kupers).

Can we do better? Sure. Richard is correct--we do know a substantial amount about how to rehabilitate people, and indeed we've known some of that for a long time. The key is indeed to tailor the 'treatment'to the individual needs of the offender (there's an important series of studies by a group of Canadian criminologists, among them Paul Gendreau, that drives home this point).

Why don't we do it? Yes, it's partly a default of the politicians--an issue we've raised before. But it's important to remember that the demise of rehabilitation in the criminal justice system in the 1970s (we gave it at least lip service in the 50s and 60s) was a complicated matter. It was shot down by an alliance of right AND left; the right rejected it because it "coddled criminals" and cost money, some of the left because it was seen as giving too much power over peoples'lives to the State, in the form of prison authorities.

Today I think we see important stirrings of change, again coming from all points on the political spectrum. Conservatives are starting to look at rehabilitation with more respect, in partbecause they now understand that it wouldsave money after all--as compared with mass incarceration and the resulting revolving door. Liberals are acknowledging that a lot of people who commit crimes really do need a lot of serious help, and are not just unfortunates caught up in a repressive system.

So will this mean that things change a lot in the near future? Nobody can say for sure. It will depend in part on the state of the economy--there's always more support for investing in rehabilitation when there's a flush economy to underwrite it. And it will depend--as always--on our ability to raise the level of public awareness on this issue, which brings us right back to the concerns raised by Donald Strauss and others.

Finally, a couple of thoughts on terrorism--unsurprisingly, a running theme over the past several days. Richard raises a question I've heard in many quarters since September 11--can't we approach this as a criminal justice matter rather than one of war?I certainly hope so, but doesn't that depend in part on who's actually responsible? For example, if it were to turn out that it's indeed Osama bin Laden, or some other rogue organization, then it would make perfect sense to try to build an international consensus to find and prosecute these people in some world jurisdiction. But what if there's a national state behind all of this? What if, in a real sense, the government of one or more countries is indeed making war on us? Is there really a criminal justice response that fits? I'm not sure of the answer, but I put it out as a question for discussion.

Several participants--Richard, Raymond, and Douglass--raise the issue of the need to address the motivation for terrorism, if we're ever going to deal with it; Richard questions whether we can ever eradicate it. I hope we will talk about this more as we go along, because I think we--that is, the social science community in particular--haven't yet done a very good of uncovering the motivation--or motivations--for terrorism (I suspect that there are several quite different kinds of terrorism and that they spring from different sources).

For now, one thought: I think that terrorism in its modern forms may be more eradicable than we sometimes assume. We tend to think of it as deeply entrenched in human behavior, deeply rooted in culture, but that may be somewhat misleading. There's a case to be made, for example, that much of the current virulent form of Islamic terrorism has its roots in very recent history, notably the Afghanistan war (which Douglass refers to) during which a kind of apocalyptic "holy war" mentality was nurtured, not least by the U.S., in the service of fighting Soviet influence in that region. Much terrorism today may, in short, be a case of our reaping what we've sowed. But by the same token, it may be possible to reverse the process--by working to build democratic institutions that more realistically address the deep social and economic problems of that region (I'm not suggesting that will be easy...)

1:50) 23-SEP-2001 15:47 Elliott Currie

Folks, as we come closer to the end of the month (amazing how time zooms by!)I wonder if I might do two things: first, put an issue on the table that we haven't yet talked about, but that I think is critical to the whole discussion of Criminal Justice and Human Rights--namely, the death penalty; and second, to turn our collective thoughts toward solutions, or at least steps toward positive change.

The implementation of the death penalty in America raises human rights issues on several fronts, not least because what we do here is widely considered to be in violation of international treaties on human rights and is a subject of great concern to a lot of our friends in other countries around the world. Most of the advanced societies of the world, with the exception of Japan and a couple of others, have abolished the death penalty altogether; no country outside of a few authoritarian ones allows its use on juveniles or the mentally retarded, as we continue to.

Meanwhile, there are increasing revelations that many people have been wrongly sentenced to death in the US and that the quality of legal representation for capital defendants in some states is scandalousy bad.

Faced with all of this--with what some would surely describe as a kind of moral crisis around this issue--what should people of good will do? What should be the position of thoughtful leadership in the U.S. on the future of the death penalty? Is there a strong case for abolition? If not, is there a less sweeping case for ending the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally disabled? Or are we doing the right thing as it is, while the rest of the world is sadly misguided?

And then, the more general issue of the quest for solutions to what I think most of us have agreed is the unhappy state of criminal justice in the country today. We've talked about a number of critical problems, ranging from the collateral effects of the drug war as now prosecuted, to the collapse of rehabilitative efforts in the prisons,and much more.We have, I think, drawn a portrait of a system in serious trouble, and many of your comments might suggest that it is indeed a system that has gone fundamentally astray.

Well then, what would a ''good'' justice system look like, and how do we get there? At the risk of seeming too schematic, if we were to be asked to come up with a ten-point program for change tomorrow, or next month, what would we say? And--to raise again an issue several of youbrought up early on--how would we then get others in America on board?

--EC

1:51) 23-SEP-2001 20:06 Richard Farson

For me, it's not a question of the effectiveness of the death penalty.I understand that is is not much of a deterrent, but even if it were I would oppose it.It's not just what it does to the criminal.It's what it does to us.Having a death penalty affects not just the penalized, but the society that carries out the penalty.It hardens us.It makes the deliberate killing of another human acceptable.

We used to do research on people that involved deceiving them, and we were concerned about the effect of the deception on our subjects.But the more dangerous effects were not on the deceived, but on the deceiver.But those effects were more subtle, less visible. It lowered our appreciation for the people we were dealing with.It blinded us to their strengths.It eroded our respect for people in general. There is a similar danger with the death penalty.It's not just what it does to the people we kill, but how it weakens our higher purposes and compromises our better selves.

1:52) 23-SEP-2001 20:52 Donald Straus

I am not sure where I stand on the death penalty. But I think that that there are severalconsiderations which should be examined on the way to a decision: * Are there any crimes so henious that death is appropriate: e.g. flying a loaded passenger plane into a building full of people? * Not to weigh murder in money terms, but we should consider what might be the uses of the cost of a long life sentence for the criminal justice system. * I would also like to consider giving a convicted criminal with a life sentence a choice of serving it out or being put to death.

1:53) 23-SEP-2001 21:48 Raymond Alden

I am unaware of any persuasive argument in favor of the death penalty.

On the opposing side there are many, with varying degrees of tangible evidence:

1.To exercise such a judgement is beneath my dignity as a man -- admittedly a personal, spritual, even religious position.I would kill were it necessary to save another's life, or my own, probably. 2.It is irreversible, leaving no room for error. 3.It is uneconomic.The cost to the public of implementation is often conspicuously higher than the cost of maintaining a life in prison.What the average figures might be, I don't know; nor do I know how the maintenance cost might be reduced by putting prisoners to work, constructively. 4.What Dick has said about the psychological effect upon the society of executors.

This is issue is, to me, what some of my friends call a "no brainer".

1:54) 23-SEP-2001 22:32 Richard Farson

Ray, I think you can add to your list that it fails to deter crime, but that is largely unknowable in any final terms.I think that those who are for the death penalty would cite quite a few supportive Biblical references.And, of course, the main argument--that the executed person is not going to commit any further crimes.What, you're not persuaded?

1:55) 25-SEP-2001 18:17 Douglass Carmichael

For me its simply that i don't want to live ina world here legitimacy takes lives.

The argument on the otehr side is, in the face of no relgious ties, only repression maintains the coherence of society. This argument, starting with Hobbes in its modern form, is serious and needs consideration.

My answer is, spend more on education, education, education.

Also avoid plea bargaining, work on why we can't get Juries of peers, and pay for justice that is fair, clean, fast.

And lets have a much better theory of incarceration that leads back to active roles in society.

1:56) 26-SEP-2001 02:24 Elliott Currie

Let me just jump in on a couple of the empirical issues raised by Raymond, Donald and Richard--the questions of the cost of the death penalty versus lengthy imprisonment, and of the deterrent effect of the death penalty on violent crime.

Raymond is right--all the evidence shows that the death penalty is very expensive indeed. Many people find that counterintuitive, since after all we get rid of the offenders quicker than if we keep them in prison for life.But a study in the state of Texas not too long ago concluded that executing a capital defendant would cost around three times what it would cost to keep him/her in prison for forty years. Part of the reason is that we don't execute people quickly, and so we pay a lot more to keep them behind bars and to support their frequent appeals than many people realize. But more of the reason involves the high cost of the death penalty trial itself, which requires (if it's done with anything approaching seriousness or fairness) huge expenditures for complex investigations, expert witnesses, often high levels of security, and so on. When a small county in Texas not too long ago had two death penalty trials in a single year, it threatened to bankrupt local government because the anticipated cost of the trials amounted to more than half the county's total budget.

Richard raises the issue of the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and I'd agree that on balance the serious research shows no deterrent effect on homicide--though in fairness, there are some who would disagree. I'd add that there is a small but interesting body of reserach, some of it quite recent, suggesting that the death penalty has what criminologists sometimes call a "counterdeterrent"effect--meaning that it CAUSES homicide, rather than deterring it. There's a study in Oklahoma, for example, that finds certain kinds of homicide--the kinds for which you can get sentenced to death--slightly rising just after an execution.Why? Nobody knows exactly, but many suspect the existence of what's called a "brutalization" effect; when the state kills someone, it generally degrades the value of human life and helps to persuade the people most likely to commit violent crime (if they needed persuading) that killing is an OK thing to do (I think Douglass' comments bear directly on this).

Raymond argues that the issue of the death penalty is a no-brainer; but if so, how do we confront the fact that a clear majority of Americans still support its use? How do we change that public consensus? Support has fallen in the last year or so--but the fall is from over 80% to about 66%.

--EC

1:57) 01-OCT-2001 03:40 Elliott Currie

Well, it's a little after midnight on the first of October, and so my role in this forum has come to an end. I've greatly enjoyed working with all of you who participated in these discussions; and though we didn't come to definitive conclusions about the issues we raised, we did raise a lot of them, and I appreciate the insights you all have provided. I plan to keep whacking away at these matters for a long time to come, and I'm sure that those insights will be helpful as I do so.

Very best regards to all of you--

Elliott Currie

1:58) 01-OCT-2001 15:30 Richard Farson

And thank you, Elliott, for a most illuminating journey.We will be returning to this critical area, and, I hope, to you too. Meanwhile, best of luck to you.

1:59) 01-OCT-2001 23:40 Raymond Alden

Yes indeed!Thank you, Elliott, and God bless!

Just in case someone is listening:In answer to Elliott's last question, "How do we change that public consensus?", I would answer as follows:

First, if public support has fallen from 80% to 66% recently, we are working with a favorable trend.We therefore should continue to work harder in whatever we've been doing.

Second, in my opinion, all that is needed is a few well-known public leaders to speak out against the death penalty, as simply bad public policy.In today's political climate, it might be necessary to set aside the crime of terrorism, but that would not cause me to lose much sleep.

Thinking About Drug Abuse - separate thread within this conference

209-SEP-2001 16:23 Barry McCaffrey

Douglass,

Do not believe that my tone trys to narrow the range of discussion...I was actually simply offended by the insensitiveapproach of equating heroin, meth, poly drug abuse.... to oxygen, sugar, and Cuban cigars. I've spent too much time and energy trying to help 5 million chronically addicted Americans to be lightly amused by some superficial approach to the problem.A lot is known about the issue...$600 million of research last year by National Institute of Drug Abuse.My view is that many of us are talking past each other here...there is a lot to be learned from those of us who are working in the field.I respectfully offer these insights for your collective consideration...no longer have to do this as an obligation of office. Some of you are not getting it when I'm agreeing with you...others need to listen to an informed viewpoint and determine if it adds to your understanding of the issue.In my judgement, there is some 70's twaddle flowing around on this issue which needs to be considered in the light of new data from science.

Barry

2:1) 09-SEP-2001 19:07 Douglass Carmichael

I think we could learn from each other. No one here has made a superficial remark. hat appears to be superficial is because the real meat of the mentioned issue lies deep and has to do with reframing. And reframing is necessary, because current approaches are not working and causing lots of damage. The way to policy is through expanding the boundaries of the problem.

If we look at the life situation of those five million, we see a group that is not a random sample of Americans. It’s a group that is more stressed, more malnourished, more socially alienated: and this is true across incomes and wealth. There is no single causal line.

"70's twaddle is too raw to deal with." specifics might help. As would taking on the full range of issues that have been brought up by people, each of who is also informed, though often about other aspects of the whole reality that ach of us must deal with.

We must deal with the justice system in an increasingly complex society. we must deal with the contempt bred by current incarceration policies. I hate now to go to Europe because of the increasing hostility towards the bizarreness of the American position.

We must deal ith the strategies of the pharmaceutical companies, and don't forget the tobacco companies. They all have vigorous strategies towards a much more drug intense future.

We must deal with the whole position of poverty as a system and stop treating it like a justification for our own honor and integrity by contrast.

We must deal with an economy. Did i quote the managers at a party "if you are paying any of your employees more than thirty thousand a year, you are making a mistake. Replace them with a kid, or machine, or someone overseas."

I am fasicated by the implications, if any, of convergences like

> >>White House hires a CIO >>http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0903/web-cio-09-07-01.asp >> >>BY Diane Frank >>Sept. 7, 2001 >> >>For the first time, the White House has a chief information officer to >> coordinate all of the technology and e-government work in the Executive >> Office of the President. >> >>As CIO, Tim Campen said he is responsible for supporting network, >> desktop, mobile and Internet needs across the White House's multiple >> offices and councils. These include the Office of Management and Budget, >> the National Security Council, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. >> >>Campen has been director of House Information Resources since 1998. >> Before that, he was deputy director for technology at the National Drug >> Intelligence Center at the Justice Department.

2:2) 09-SEP-2001 23:19 Barry McCaffrey

Douglass,

We do need to reframe the issue...I agree!Look at the Strategy outlined on Whitehousedrugpolicy.com...that's what we're actually trying to implement as a national approach.There are serious problems which it will take a decade to adequately address.However, the current approach IS beginning to work...drug use is DOWN 50% since the 1979 high..cocaine use is down 70% in a decade...drug related crime is down dramatically...drug related murders are down by a half...etc, etc. Drug courts up 12 to 800+.....media campaign cut adolescent drug use 21% in the past two years.Huge problems remain...however, this conference should start with some common understanding of the problem....I don't see that yet in this discussion. Indeed, I find my brilliant friend John Craven's remarks to be superficial, uninformed, and insensitive.This exchange may not be in truth productive...we'll see.

Barry

2:3) 10-SEP-2001 00:45 Richard Farson

Barry, I can believe it must be frustrating to have spent years working intensively in every aspect of America's and the world's drug problem, and then have to read remarks from us that seem to you uninformed, even flippant, perhaps ideologically driven or out-of-date.I hope that won't deter you from your effort to make clear aspects of the programs you know about that we might not.

I know that you disliked the term "drug war", and you probably dislike even more the many leaders who have concluded that the war is lost, unwinnable.As far as I can tell, their feelings come from these few ideas:1) interdiction has failed to reduce the influx of drugs, that hard drugs are cheaper and better quality now than before; 2) Singling out a few drugs, and not others, e.g., such killers as alcohol and tobacco, seems misguided and unfair, and the effort fails to position itself in the context of the massive legalized drugging of the American people; 3) the emphasis on interdiction or punishment rather than prevention is cost ineffective and unwise, 4) Incarceration of up to half our prison population for "drug related" crimes, in prisons which can be training grounds for more serious crimes seems foolish, and out of balance to the total crime picture; 5) Our obsession about drugs is leading us into what could be a military morass in Colombia, and perhaps elsewhere; 6) Prevention programs are not all that successful, many graduates return to drugs.No doubt there are other arguments they would use that I can't think of right now.But what is your response to them?

One of my best friends has four grown children--all beautiful, smart, educated, athletic, talented, and loved and adored by their parents--and all four have irreparably wrecked their lives with the drugs you are combating.I can assure you that no one in this conference regards drug use as trivial.What we will learn in this conference will no doubt be similar to what we learned in the abortion conference we once ran--that the viewpoints of thinking people who are at opposite poles of the argument are just about equally intelligent, valid and compelling.That's what makes the drug issue not a problem, but a predicament--a dilemma that has no solution, perhaps the best we can hope for are better ways of coping, managing. In any case, we will emerge better informed and wiser.

2:4) 10-SEP-2001 18:46 Elliott Currie

I too sense Barry's frustration, and having been up close--very close--to the hard realties of the drug problem at many points in my professional career, I think I share a similar sense of urgency about the problem, and a similar appreciation of its seriousness.But I also agree with Douglass that all of us are informed on these issues, albeit in different ways. A common understanding is something I hope we might strive for at the end of our discussions, but I'd be mighty surprised to see it at the beginning.

I'm less convinced that Barry is about the strength of the evidence that what we're now doing is working. That's partly because I know too much about the way we gather data on the drug problem.A good deal of what we think of as hard data on the extent and distribution of drug use in our society comes from a couple of self-report surveys which, in my view, are useful as far as they go but also extremely limited, and often presented in quite misleading ways. For example, when you read in the newspaper that teen drug use is dropping (or rising), you are most likely reading about the results of a survey of high school students done in their classrooms,that asks them whether the're doing drugs, how often, and what kind. There is room for this in our arsenal of research tools, to be sure. But I have to tell you that when I ask the teenaged drug abusers I've been interviewing intensively over the past year and a half or so whether they think such a survey would give an accurate picture of the state of teen drug use, they just laugh. For that matter, when I ask them whether they think drug abuse among adolescents in their communities is falling, they also laugh.

This isn't to say that no progress has been made. It is to say that we need to be very toughminded about the uses and limits of the conventional measures we use to inform ourselves about what's happening in the drug world. Much the same could be said about the literature on the effectiveness of treatment; the evidence on what works, how exactly it works,for whom, and how well, is far less cut and dried than the way it is often presented.

So--speaking as a social scientist who's been looking at this stuff for longer than I care to think about--I don't think the evidence points us toward any very simple answers at this point. It leaves a great deal of room for honest disagreement, and it suggests the truth of Richard's comment about drugs being a 'predicament.'

--EC

2:5) 11-SEP-2001 00:02 Douglass Carmichael

Thanks Barry, and for all the excellent holding of this as a safe conversation by Dick and Elliott. To caricature the conversation a bit, we have two models. ( I am putting my own laziness on the line here, and expect to be in part correctly corrected). Barry's: drugs are bad and current repressive methods under the banner of "illegal" is making progress in narrowing use. We need to persevere. Alternative multi author model: first, that the two assumptions above are not quite true. Some drugs are good (Plato says the drinking party is good and gives a passionate explication in the Republic, the use in ecstatic rituals dominates early religious practice everywhere (see Mercia Eliade, History of Religious Ideas in Three Volumes). That use is declining. In the two communities I know, it just is not true, from what local police parents and children tell me.

Now, to the aspects not present in Barry's model: the nature of an underclass in a society thatbelieves mostly in market and money, the nature of the symbiosis between drug producers and law enforcement, the devastating effects on families whose children and spouses and parents are in jail on minor charges, the devastating effect on the public perception of the legal system, the devastating effects on citizen ethics when laws are passed that a very large number of people violate every day (use of drugs in hospitals by physicians, in law firms by lawyers, ..), the tie in to the evolution of mind altering substance and the future of the pharmacopoeia, general issues of boredom among middle class youth in a society where being young and looking at the future is scary.

Well, these are to start.

2:6) 12-SEP-2001 20:09 Elliott Currie

Douglass, I'd just like to second your point about the importance of thinking about issues like poverty and disadvantage and stress when we think about the drug problem. You've brought that up at several points, and I think quite rightly so. To me, in fact, it's that level of social and economic forces that is too often left out in our national debates about drugs and drug policy.

I'm convinced that part of the reason why we in the U.S. have such a particularly entrenched problem with hard drug abuse has to do with the extremes of social disadvantage that we tolerate (or encourage), and especially, as you note, the existence of a broad underclass in a land and culture that centers on money. And for that matter,the bulk of the other countries around the world that have dreadfully pervasive drug problems tend likewise to suffer wide inequalities of economic and social condition. I don't think that we can separate drug policy from a broader strategy to combat those conditions--not if we hope to really make an enduring impact on drug abuse.

--EC

2:7) 15-SEP-2001 14:26 Raymond Alden

Amen!

When and where are we going to talk about that?

2:8) 16-SEP-2001 18:06 Douglass Carmichael

Let's look at the choice: two states of mind; hope, or drugs?

We just need to know that if circumstances don't support hope, with its mind-altering health, the choice must be drugs, with their mind-altering numbness.

Myfather used to come home and drink Martinis. I had a real father for about half an hour before he was unavailable, in his fog pacific looking out at the Pacific from Laguna Niguel. Most of us have seen, or harbored moments of despair. What is hard is to realize how deep is the despair in many of our communities. My limo driver from the airport a few weeks ago was saying “I went to visit a with my baby who kept crying. I asked her why hers wasn’t crying.” “She is used to the gunfire around here.”

I have a grade school friend, from one of New York’s best private schools, and he has been a struggling artist and lives in Hoboken in an apartment where you can see the outside through the slats in the bathroom, where he has four cats to keep from being bitten by rats. His neighbors, Jamaicans, Vietnamese, Salvadorian’s: “you know these are really wonderful people, but we can’t afford to stay here any more. They are raising the rent here from 700 to 900..”

2:9) 19-SEP-2001 16:56 Elliott Currie

Poignant and telling comments from Douglass on the roots of the despair that leads to drug abuse, and its pervasiveness. Raymond asks when and where we'll talk about these matters; I think we could certainly do some of that right here and now--though the issues are much bigger than can be easily encompassed in one forum about crime and justice.

I'm convinced, for example, that there are ways to address the problem of severe poverty that Douglass has brought up at several points. To me, one of the most crucial is to insure that working people have a living wage. The centrality of that seems obvious, because it affects the lives of low-income people in so many ways that are related to the drug problem. A decent wage allows people, especially the young, to feel that they have a stake in legitimate life and can counter the appeal of making money by dealing drugs. It can give them a sense that they are doing something meaningful and that they have some rewarding future in the world of work--an antidote to despair. It can give parents the relative leisure that will enable them to spend more time raising their kids in a nurturing way-as opposed to working three jobs to keep a roof over their heads. It can help to provide a sense of dignity that all by itself, I think, helps to counter the appeal of the drug life.And more.

There have been a number of successful campaigns in cities to provide a living wage for workers; several others are on the table, including some at major universities, where lower-level workers are often scandalously underpaid. I'm a fan of these efforts, for all the reasons I've just suggested. I'd like to see the idea of a living wage elevated to a national principle, and a national policy.

That's just one approach, of course. I'm looking right now at an interesting short book by the Harvard economist Richard Freeman (The New Inequality) that sets out several innovative approaches to the reduction of poverty. I'll report back on this to the group when I've had a chance to finish it. Meanwhile, all thoughts on this issue are most welcome.

--EC

2:10) 19-SEP-2001 17:15 Donald Straus

Once again Elliott brings up both an issue and an opportunity that this Multiple Ring Circus is revealing: how to handle complex and inter-twined issues in a discussion with humans who have a limited ability to handle multiple issues.

Ideally, everyone of us should be attending all of the current Fora.That is not a practical suggestion for members who are already over-burdened with their daily chores and pressed for time.

But somehow -- beyond my capabilities -- this is grist for IT techies.Perhaps someone with the talents and time could be asked to cruise around the different pockets of discussion and organize the related issues and their relationships to each other in a Summary Conference.

2:11) 19-SEP-2001 19:28 Richard Farson

Elliott, I'm for a living wage, or maybe even for a guaranteed annual income, or both, but I once read an article by Milton Friedman, the conservative economist (who argued for a guaranteed income), who said that when the minimum wage is raised, young people are forced out of the labor market.If that is true, then a minimum wage solution would defeat you major concern about improving the lives of the youth.

2:12) 21-SEP-2001 03:07 Elliott Currie

Richard's question is an important one, since the argument that minimum wages, much less living wages, will increase unemployment is a very common objection. I think there are several responses to it.

First, there's by now a good deal of empirical data that shows that the minimum wage doesn't really have the job-destroying impact that critics expect it to.There are studies of the fast-food industry, for example, that show that raising the minimum wage on the state level doesn't lower employment for young people. Why not? In part, probably, because the level of extra expenditure is rather easily absorbed by these businesses--we're not talking about huge sums of money here. The studies we have of the job impact of recent living wage campaigns appear to suggest the same thing, as I read them.

There are some situations where this may not be true, especially in the case of very small employers that have tiny profit margins and really would have a hard time raising anybody's wages. But that's why many living wage campaigns exclude employers with below a specified number of employees. We could also envision governments stepping in to help subsidize living wages for hard-pressed small employers.

Finally, my own feeling is that it's more crucial to ensure that there are meaningful and well-paid jobs for ADULTS than for teens. What's important for teens is to be able to see a solid and rewarding work role in their futures, more than making some money right now. At this age, they are better off concentrating on school or some other kind of training.So even if higher wages did cause some job loss among kids, the trade-off in terms of more solid jobs for adults would be a positive one.

Donald, what about a low-tech solution that follows what we often do in face-to-face conferences--where the various groups that break off to have specific discussions come together at the end and have someone 'report out'to the larger conference on what went on in their group? Would that do the trick?

2:13) 21-SEP-2001 06:29 Richard Farson

Elliott, I am greatly comforted by your information that young people are not forced out of the labor market by raising the minimum wage. I have carried around that apparent myth for many years. Having been an advocate for children's rights, however, I think we need to create options other than schools to permit them to pursue alternative ways to enter society.I suspect that might affect their involvement in the criminal justice system.

2:14) 21-SEP-2001 15:30 Donald Straus

Elliott: Low-tech facilitated discussions have been an important improvement for some time, and they have become a frequently used method in both industry, small government groups, and non-profits. But what I have been interested in is a substitute for the yes/no election and especially the referendum which has been coopted to a large extent by lobbyists. This would involve many of the same facilitation skills, but for thoughsands rather than hundreds of people. This is a new and inceasingly practiced branch of experimentation, but I believe a critical one for the future health of our democracy.

2:16) 21-SEP-2001 23:04 Raymond Alden

There is another layer below the discussion about minimum wage and its effect upon employment opportunites for the lesser-skilled elements of society (at whatever age).I am distressed by the implications of an economic system that, it is said, must grow constantly, inventing new ways for people to spend money -- often needlessly -- or else fall into depression.

If it is accurate to say that this is an underlying characteristic of our economic system, then time is against us and we fret over it in vain.

To counter or even eliminate this trend (if it is, truly, an inevitable trend) I have in mind an approach that addresses stock ownership and the available return on capital.You say this has already been addressed? Not seriously!We've just dabbled with the idea.

2:17) 22-SEP-2001 09:39 Donald Straus

Ray: Another approach that has been frequently discussed is called, by economists, "internalizing the external costs of natural resources".

As you know better than I, what this means is to insist on adding the costs of non-renewable resources (such as oil, soil erosion, living space, air pollution).Another way of putting it is that growth at the expense of non-renewable resources is a "poison".

This is a hard sell, because "free enerprise" is such a sacred mantra in our culture.But once the extent of this poison becomes recognized (as have terrorists become in our recent past) it may be easier to accept some counter-mantra adjustents.

2:18) 23-SEP-2001 21:51 Raymond Alden

Don: I agree with what you say.But help me, please, to relate "internalizing the external costs of natural resources" to the dependence upon growth for continued prosperity.

2:19) 23-SEP-2001 22:36 Richard Farson

I'm no authority on the subject, but there are economists who argue for the benefits of a "sustainable" economy, as opposed to a "growth" economy.

2:20) 24-SEP-2001 08:52 Donald Straus

Ray and Dick:Nor am I an economist. But as I understand "internalizing costs) it means what Dick has cdalled a sustainable economy rather than a growth economy.Again in lay terms, our free enterprise system spurs continuous growth. By internalizing costs to the environment, business incentives to grow will be dampened by having invasion of the environment add costs, thereby adding an incentive to be enviromentally aware.

2:21) 26-SEP-2001 15:23 Elliott Currie

Though it may seem like a long jump from the problem of the kid selling drugs on an inner-city street corner to the big issues about economic sustainability raised by Donald, Raymond and Richard, I think it's a jump in a straight line--and that these are very crucial questions if we do want to create an economy that can foster equality and dignity (and hence a reduction in drug abuse).

Before I get into this further, though, I'd like to back up a little and ask Ray what he meant by "an äpproach that addresses stock ownership and the available return on capital?" We didn't get into that yet, but I'm intrigued.

2:22) 01-OCT-2001 23:48 Raymond Alden

Sorry to be late in replying, Elliott.(I hope you're still watching.)

The federal legislation some thirty years ago that produced "Employee Stock Ownership Plans" and "Employee Stock Purchase Plans" was inspired by the writings of Louis Kelso (sometimes in collaboration with Mortimer Adler).The basic idea was to make the ordinary citizen more dependent on "Return on Capital" and less dependent on "Return on Labor" -- his own labor, that is.

Some of the ingredients: Do not tax corporate income; require 100% distribution of corporate earnings, so that corporations must go into the market (and sell stock) to get capital for what they now do with "re-invested earnings"; and there were many, many other details which elude me now.

Reference: The Capitalist Manifesto, by Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler, written in the mid-50's, I believe.