International WOD
As the world becomes more globally inter-linked, these are typical
interest blocks for all products – the manufacturers, importers
and exporters. But this is not a typical product because there
are so many cultural and religious overtones to use.
 All these issues had to filter through complex cultural and
social responses as well.
 Thus the logic for control can get VERY irrational and
hypocritical.
 For example, even though China was suffering from a Britishcaused opium problem, the upstart revolutionary Mao was involved
in the opium trade to fund his army and at the same time, accused
the Japanese of forcing Chinese peasants to grow opium.
1
International WOD
So the now established MO for dealing with drugs is this:
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Forbid legal trafficking except for drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical
companies.
Illegal substances’ medical value is removed by non-scientific process.
Force producing countries to alter their cultural fabric.
Relinquish production and distribution to non-legitimate organizations
Corrupt legitimate organizations through temptation of profit and the means
to act in the supply chain.
Since the producing countries were also the less developed countries, the
ability for them to establish stable democratic governments and
socioeconomic structures became severely challenged.
Counter-government forces grow or traffic in drugs in order to fund
themselves and control farmers through organized crime ‘protection’
schemes. They then alliance themselves with governments or forces
opposed to the legitimate government.
In sum, anti-drug campaigns as currently formulated all but guarantee
instability and violence.
2
International WOD
Example - Panama
 General Omar Torrijos had been a populist leader of Panama and wanted
the people of Panama to share more in the benefits of its canal.
 The CIA wanted to assassinate him but Watergate got in the way.
 He died in a plane crash in 1981 which was somewhat mysterious.
 Manuel Norriega, on the CIA payroll, was installed in his place.
 Norriega made money trafficking in drugs, and the CIA knew it but
supported him because he was anti-communist.
 But he didn’t seem to support the US war against the contras in Nicaragua,
and now became a problem for the US, preferring to strengthen his own
interests.
 The US invaded, removed Norriega from power, tried him as a tyrant and
drug trafficker, and installed a more supportive government.
3
International WOD
Other consequences of the War on Drugs
 Corruption of DEA in international efforts to become traffickers
instead of interceptors.
 Corruption of CIA in fighting communism with drug money.
 Justification of assassinations and more
 Environmental degradation, e.g.,:
– Through eradication methods.
– Through practice of non-sustainable methods of agriculture for shorter
profit frames.
– Through Mexican cartels planting marijuana in national parks.
4
WOD – Impact
Consequences of Prohibition Mindset
 User is labeled as a criminal
 With deviance-lumping, all behavior is suspect.
 Drug use is equated with drug abuse.
 Abuse is bad, or evil, or sinful. Immoral, hence the setup for a symbolic crusade to stamp out the evil.
 Leading to the WOD being essentially a War on Certain
Elements of Society.
 It’s “data-resistant”, and avoids a public health
responsibility, even though the existence, maintenance
and promotion of drugs of abuse is the result of larger
societal, governmental, political and corporate actions.
5
WOD – Impact
Areas of Impact
 Health
 Economy
 Communities
 Families, Children, Women, Marriage
 Education
 As well as other areas covered previously, such as
police corruption
6
WOD – Impact
Health
 Loss of treatments to portfolio of medical treatment choices.
 Problems from drug purity and strength
 Disease transmission: HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and B, Tuberculosis,
STDs
 Lack of emphasis on treatment of the abuse (unequal access);
Proposition 36 and Drug Courts.
 Lack of preventive medical care.
 Fear of calling 911 in event of drug overdose or complication.
 IV Needle programs
– Needle-exchange program (185 programs in 36 states; educ opps)
– Physician prescribed (contact with physician, too)
– Pharmacy sold (educ opps)
7
WOD – Impact
Impact on Children – ‘Saving’ the children
With the emphasis on prohibition instead of treatment:
 Parents identified as abusive or neglectful parents.
 Children removed from parents and/or home.
 Funds for education redirected, loss of fine arts, music, after-school
programs, libraries, even though….
 Children most likely to be using drugs between 3-6 PM (also prime
times for kids’ shoplifting, etc.)
 Lack of attention given to legally available substances, e.g.,
inhalants, the parents’ medicine cabinet.
 White House Office of National Drug Policy wants to start testing
high school students without suspicion and even when not in sports.
Allows identifying – and tracking – of children right into the penal
system.
 Kids with priors denied college financial aid since 1998 (Souder
amendment). 43,000 students in 2001-2002 lost aid.
Disproportionate to minority students.
8
WOD – Impact
Impact on Women
 Testing while pregnant: warrant-less search and seizure.
 If detected, can be prosecuted as child abuser.
 Felony to smoke pot while pregnant in Texas.
 Public benefits (e.g., housing) denied with drug prior (which affects
kids, marriage).
 Crack-babies exaggerated (yes, there is an impact, but…). Women
demonized.
 Women, especially black women, fastest growing population
arrested for drug offenses (8x instead of 4x increase)
 Women get higher sentences than men because they are less
powerful in the trafficking business, and so have little information
with which to plea.
 Men sell out their women more frequently than women sell out men
in order to reduce sentence.
9
WOD – Impact
Economy and community
 Huge black market of untouched revenue, plus it funds
organized crime, corruption, etc.
 Incarcerations have removed prime producers from
economy and artificially improved unemployment rates.
 Inner city economy based on black market because of
structural changes in the economy and the business
structure of drug manufacturing and trafficking.
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Violence
Not sustainable
No role models
Depresses likelihood of economic investment
10
WOD – Impact
Recap: Forms of deviance seen in the WOD
 The user (responsible versus abuser) or perhaps, the
non-user.
 Individual seller or distributor
 Criminal business and organized crime
 White collar
 Political
Military-industrial complex
 Corporate
 Governmental
Yet, even if a psychoactive substance were totally legal we’d still have a number,
perhaps all, of these forms of deviance.
11
WOD – Impact
Policy strategies
 Based on values
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Libertarian
Cost-benefit analysis
Moral relativism and morality
Public health – demand reduction, behavioral approach
Economic development
Prohibition – more of the same
12
WOD – Impact
Policy strategies
 Based on research
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Economic development
Treatment for abuse
Truth in advertising for prevention and responsible use
Youth investment programs
Keep mind-altering and addictive substances out of the free market
Mutually supportive programs in foreign relations recognizing cultural
and other socioeconomic and political differences.
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WOD – Incarceration
Incarceration
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Perhaps the biggest impact of the Prohibition policy is increased rates of
incarceration, and increased length of sentences due to the WOD.
In 1983, 1 in 10 was incarcerated for a drug offense, 1 in 4 in 2002.
55% of federal prison inmates are sentence for drug offenses: 2001, 20% in state
prisons.
One in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is under state control or
supervision.
At yearend 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000
black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per
100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.
80% of women incarcerated for drug offenses in 1999, compared to 26% in 1983.
In 1998, 3.2 million women were arrested and that women accounted for 17% of all
drug felony convictions.
In 1999, 2.1% of children in the U.S. had a parent in State or Federal prison. Black
children were nearly 9 times more likely to have a parent in prison than White
children. Latino children were 3 times as likely as White children to have an inmate
parent.(12)
References: See www.drugpolicyalliance.org, and www.sentencingproject.org.
14
Mass Imprisonment
800
700
600
500
Rate per
100,000
400
300
200
100
0
1980
2005
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/
15
Mass Imprisonment
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm
16
Mass Imprisonment
Source: US Dept of Justice: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/corr2.htm
17
Mass Imprisonment
Mass imprisonment is sheer numbers, and the “social
concentration of imprisonment’s effects” Garland (ed), p. 1).
 Creates systematic social, economic and political exclusion by race
(social marginality)
 Develops and supports criminal underclass through criminogenic
nature of incarceration and parole/probation rules
 Understates unemployment rate by removing ‘unemployable’ from
society.
 Alters norms and values of communities across generations.
 Creates a gulag system of economy, where prisoners are increasingly
perform work for government and private business without pay.
18
Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Garland sought to understand how it is that the US and the UK trended
toward Mass Imprisonment (MI), using historical sociological
methods.
He found:
A shift from ‘penal welfare’ to ‘retributive’ model…
Prompted by social and tech. changes.
Enabled by a shift to political conservatism.
Resulting in a marginalization of subgroups.
Who were blamed for the problems in society, as was the liberal penal
welfare model.
6. This shift resulted from a desire for security, order and control missing
following (2).
7. And led to a combination of ‘market and moral discipline’ with more
controls on the poor and fewer on everyone else.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
19
Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Market and moral discipline
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Tax cuts for wealthy and decreased social services for others.
Deregulation of financial and credit industries.
Privatization of government enterprises.
Reduced regulation of other corporate entities.
An end to welfare ‘as we know it.’
“What is missing today... is …the old welfarist notion that individual
decisions and choices are socially structured, as are the capacities
and opportunities for realizing them.” (p. 198).
20
Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Prisons became a means to segregate undesirable subgroups, typically
young urban minority males, while leaving those with social capital
unconstrained.
And because it is a labor problem, the prisons have become labor
camps.
Why?
 It’s easier for governments to punish than provide security.
 Affluent support prisons
 Criminal control became a commodity and product.
 Suffering victim affects sentencing.
 Drug war enhanced view of undeserving felon.
 Prison policies share same philosophy as welfare policies.
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (ch 1): How did MI Happen?
Historical trends – looking at one area not enough. These developments are
interlinked.
A. Decline of rehabilitative ideal
B. Re-emergence of punitive sanctions and ‘expressive’ justice.
C. Changes in emotional tone of crime policy
D. Re-invention of prison
E. Transformation of criminological thought.
F. Expanding infrastructure of control
G. Commercialization of control
H. Promoting sense of perpetual state of crisis.
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (ch 2): end of penal welfarism: a loss in faith.
Penal welfarism: the idea that you can rehabilitate
criminals and ‘correct’ the problem in their environment
and background.
 Had been understood that affluence and social reform would either
eradicate crime or keep it at bay.
 The State would address crime and control.
 Penal welfare requires stable communities and available
opportunities.
 Perceived effectiveness
 Authority of social expertise
 Support of social elites
 Absence of political opposition.
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch.3): but political opposition happened.
A.
Results in
1.
2.
3.
B.
Mandatory instead of individualized sentencing.
Expansion of prison as ‘solution’.
Academic and political discourse got disenchanted and therefore silenced.
Nothing works…
A. Futility – doesn’t work and costs money.
B. Perversity – worsens situation
C. Jeopardy – people are at risk.
C.
Critique of correctionalism/penal welfarism
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Individual sentences disproportionately affected minorities.
Stated glossed over discrepancies paternalistically.
Treatments were problematic, too.
Deviance considered a free choice.
Press latched on to ‘what works in penalism’ to ‘nothing works’.
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch. 4): Macro-social change adds distance to PW
 Socioeconomic
 Welfare institutions
 Abandonment of progressive ideals.
 The Reagan era
– Hostility toward ‘tax & spend’ democrats, ‘underserving welfare
recipients’, ‘soft on crime’, ‘break-up of the family’ ‘unions
running/ruining the country’
 Neo-conservatism shapes policy – liberals caused all the problems.
 Prison becomes the solution
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch. 5): Different conclusions from same phenomena.
A. High crime rates become social fact.
B. Criminal justice system was limited to handle it.
C. Criminals seen as incorrigible wicked people who act rationally.
D. Market power enters
A.
B.
C.
D.
Community-focused without resources or authority.
Privatization
Success measured financially.
Private security firms for affluent (individuals and groups).
E. The need to adapt led to
1. Professionalization of criminal justice workers.
2. Redefining success as ‘incapacitation’ rather than rehabilitation.
3. Fear of crime reduction as a goal
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
The solution – (a) address problems caused by elite
deviance and (b) break chains of criminality.
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Let people know and support free non-oligopolistic press.
Support localized community building.
End drug war as we know it.
Spread corrrectional power out.
Rebuild rehab programs, including post-prison support.
Get rid of 3-strikes except for sexual violence.
Rewrite mandatory sentencing.
Regulate and oversee parole/probation policy and techniques.
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Mass Imprisonment – Garland’s The Culture of Control
Detail (Ch.6): The policy is punitive segregation.
A.
B.
C.
D.
The public must be protected.
The policy is populist and publicized.
Victims are privileged.
Social elites (liberals with money) became affected by crime
whereas before it wasn’t their problem.
E. Academics become balkanized. In many criminology
schools/departments the instructors are former police officers.
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Mass Imprisonment – Consequences and Implications
Reference: Crime Control as Industry, by Nils Christie
 Upon noting the trend toward MI and many of the contributing
factors that Garland assembled and organized, Christie observed
the following:
 Danger of crime is not the crime per se but the response to it leading
to a totalitarian regime.
 But western gulags won’t be death camps, but they will remove a
significant minority from a culture of free life to a culture of prison.
 Prisons have become a means to handle excess labor.
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People are supposed to be productive
Those unable (not necessarily of their own fault, Mills) are a problem.
A global economy may exacerbate the problem/’solution’.
Crime is viewed as a war – and the enemy is a select group of citizens.
29
Mass Imprisonment – Consequences and Implications
Profitable Prisons
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For builders and suppliers of security
Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut may (do) influence penal
policy as Lockheed, Boeing influence defense.
Prison guards and correctional officers union – powerful lobbies
Private financing for prisons – avoids scrutiny of voters.
Bed brokers work to allocate space efficiently. For a price.
Allows military to refocus energies following end of cold war.
Productive Prisons
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Inmate labor as product to be sold on the open market.
Inmate labor allows self-regeneration of prison system.
Taiwan case: harvesting organs from executed prisoners.
Rural prison locations are employment boons to depressed economies.
Conclusions: the new challenges as seen by the prison industry is not crime
or recidivism, but prison and prisoner management (Malcolm Feeley). After
all, it’s a business.
30
Mass Imprisonment – Consequences and Implications
On Democracy
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A for-profit prison labor system, that self-replicates, will seek to acquire
more labor to profit from. There is a large ‘supply’ of low capital AfricanAmericans (25% in poverty in 2005) in the US, and an almost unlimited
‘supply’ of Hispanic-origin.
The average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2005 was $19,971; for
a family of three, $15,577; for a family of two, $12,755; and for unrelated
individuals, $9,973.
In seven states, 1 of 4 black males are permanently deprived of vote. 13%
overall in US of black men (1998 figures), and in some states, 40% of AA
men expected to be permanently disenfranchised.
Impact:
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More Democrats than Republicans.
Loss of census-allocated revenues to local communities
Loss of determinism in election outcomes
Fewer citizens voting is, in itself, a threat to democracy.
31
Mass Imprisonment – Consequences and Implications
On Families
 Married persons, with children, are far less likely to be involved in
crime.
 Or, people engaged in crime are less likely to get or stay married.
 Incarceration also reduces marriage chances, and increases
divorce.
 Thus incarceration has negative impacts on the ex-convicts, the
spouses, and the children.
 Especially African-American women, are adversely affected in their
marriage market.
 When the entire community experiences a high rate of incarceration
the effect dominates the cultural norms and values and can become
self-perpetuating.
Conclusions: the sociological outcome of mass incarceration policies
results in the continued trend toward mass incarceration.
32