Forfeiture and Failure: The Hidden Costs of the War on Drugs
"In the past ten years arrests have gone up nearly 50 percent but the number of users and the supply of drugs has stayed about the same. Federal spending has kept going up, it’s up 50 percent over the past ten years and president bush still wants more … that’s just the Washington model, cities and states spend still more … three quarters of the budget, yet the drugs are still as available as ever."
Since the government cannot stop drug sellers from pushing their products due to the redundancy of arrest and incarceration a new tactic of going after buyers has been implemented. Such a system has serious ramifications for putting non-violent drug offenders in jail.
Not only does it overload the prisons but sending non-violent offender to prison will turn any normal person violent. The most serious problem with going after citizens with position charges is that to keep up with the tremendous costs of perusing such a momentous task law enforcement can now confiscate and sell any home, vehicle, or other property that helped in the transportation, storage, or usage of illicit drugs, even marijuana.
When government officials confiscate property it keeps the money, giving them an incentive to take more. For example in 1992 Dan Scott’s estate was raided for a marijuana operation. After driving down the dirt road of his 200 acre estate the police break in, guns drawn, and Scott’s wife screams “Don’t shoot me. Don’t kill me.” After hearing this, Scott having just received a cataract operation, comes to the aid of his wife with a .38 caliber. When he points the gun in the general direction of the officers they shoot and kill him. After an extensive search with helicopters, dogs, searches on foot, and high-tech Jet Propulsion Laboratory device for detecting trace amounts of sinsemilla, no marijuana or any other illegal drug was ever found. It is still questionable whether the police had probable cause to raid the ranch. It is widely viewed as the police wanting to raid and confiscate the land so that they could sell the valuable piece of property. However, in the process they clearly killed an innocent bystander in his house who was vulnerable from surgery, didn’t do anything illegal, and was only trying to protect his wife. Los Angeles County still feels their actions were justified. 1
The worst part of this whole situation is that government officials only need probable cause to confiscate your property and since it is a civil matter and not criminal the burden of proof that the property was not used in a drug related fashion is on the owner. Therefore this requires owners to prove innocents instead of the state having to prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Countless individuals have been accused of drug-related crimes based on probable cause; those individuals then go to jail (receiving the required drug-related minimum sentencing) for being unable to prove that they are innocent.
“the Tucker family [who] lived in Georgia… They owned a shop that sold, among other things, grow lights, for instance for growing orchids and flowers. And they sold the grow lights among other products that they sold at their store, but at some point someone who they sold a grow light to was arrested for growing marijuana; using the grow light to have an indoor marijuana operation. And so he turned them in, he said ‘well I bought the grow light from Tucker family’s business’. …the D.E.A. started investigating the Tuckers and decided that they knowingly were selling these grow lights to people to grow marijuana. And that because they knew that they were doing that, that was enough to convict them of ‘conspiracy with intent to distribute marijuana.’ … they ended up busting the entire family, they of course lost their shop and they each went to prison … two brothers and a wife … got at least ten years in prison.”2These stories occur all too often and because these victims cannot prove their innocence the law wrongful default’s these individuals to guilty, criminals, and deserving of a minimum incarceration sentence.
It gets even better. With unlimited amounts of money to be made from the illegal drug market, corruption is inevitable. Pay-offs are made to officers to protect dealers. Others raid dealers, steal their money, and sometimes deal drugs themselves.
“In May 1992, New York City police uncovered the largest corruption scandal in the department’s 146-year history, most of it, according to the commission that investigated it, involving ‘groups of officers … identifying drug sites; planning raids; forcibly entering and looting drug trafficking locations, and sharing proceeds."31. Gray, Mike. “Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out.” New York: Routledge, 1998.
2. “War On Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999).” Google video search.
4. Stossel, John “A War on Drugs, A War on Ourselves.” ABC Broadcasting Network August 2002
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Other Related blog(s): Nouveau Economics, Lyceum Recordz
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