« Science and Incentives | Main | The Nuclear Option »

April 12, 2006

Policing in the Industrial Age

As the war on drugs continues to criminalize larger and larger swathes of American society, Radney Balko notes how our diligent drug warriors have learned to start manufacturing crime.

"Drug cops in Falmouth, Mass. sent a hot, young female cop to pose as a student at the local high school. She befriended several adolescent boys with low self esteem by pretending she was interested in them, then she asked them to get her marijuana."

Once again, we have created a system that incentivizes precisely the behavior we're trying to suppress. Police departments are gauged to some degree by the number of arrests they make, and drug stings are an easy (and in high schools, extemely safe) way to bump arrest statistics in a hurry. So the police department looks like it's doing a good job in fighting crime by creating crime. I'm sure it's quite possible that some of these boys were already using marijuana, but I'll bet those that were also have been involved with underage drinking, a pastime that seems no less dangerous than using marijuana. But the real point is they were not drug dealers in any sense of the word: they're just kids who got some marijuana to try and impress an pretty girl. If we're going to criminalize trying to impress girls, we may see society grind to a halt in short order, as I'd wager the male desire to impress women is responsible for a fair share of human innovention over our history. More to the point, while what the boys did is de jure illegal, I'm not convinced that the police have made the streets one iota safer by tricking them into breaking the law.

The police power is a fundamental power of government. But because it is such a dangerous power, it must be watched carefully. Laws that encourage the state to encourage illegal activities create precisely the wrong incentives for government, and that is precisely what drug laws do. It's unfortunate the U.S. government failed to learn from the example of alcohol prohibition: as long as demand exists for a product, people can be found to supply it, and criminalizing something for people's own good only leads to a more dangerous society. What, I wonder, would the inner cities look like today if they didn't have to deal with the horrors of violence inspired by the illegal drug trade? And while I don't know all of these people, it would have been nice if they had been given the chance to try to contribute to society in some way other than giving their life to preserve bad laws and incompetent police work.