Introduction
The burning issue of efficacy of drug enforcement laws as a means to reduce crime has received much concern from the media and the public. In his paper, Shepard and Blackley have analyzed data from 62 counties of NY State for the years 1996-2000. Data analyzed included arrest figures for crimes such as assault, burglary, larceny and robbery. By correlating the data with different models, the authors did not find any relation with increase in drug arrests and reduction in crime. The authors have questioned the attitude of law enforcement agencies that claim that by increasing figures of drug arrests, other crimes would be reduced. Obviously, there is some gap in the thinking of law enforcers.
Shepard (p. 324) points out that after President Nixon declared the war on drugs and banned drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, heroin and amphetamines, the US government uses 2/3rd of the federal budget on enforcing drug control policies. By 2002, the government had spent 12 billion USD and arrested 2 million offenders, increasing the penalties. The disproportionate allotment of budget has neither reduced drug trafficking nor drug consumption while budgets for other services such as the National Research Council have been curtailed and the government cannot perform a cost benefit analysis of the spending. To correlate their data and findings, the authors have used different econometric models such as the microeconomic analysis of crime control and drug policies (p. 328).
Main body
These econometric models were applied to a crimes variables such as assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, hard drug sales, hard drug possession, marijuana sales and were measured on a scale of 1000 arrests per variable. For better correlation, the variables were measured along with the unemployment rate percentage and population density to obtain the sample mean and standard deviation. The data reveled crimes that occurred more frequently and after applying the fixed effects models, a pattern emerged. According to Shepard (p. 337), crime rate fell when unemployment percentages were reduced but there were no determinants to show that crimes reduced because of increase in the number of arrests. The authors conclude that there has to be more funding for research into effectiveness of law enforcement policies.
A report by the National Research Council (NAS, 29 March, 2001), laments the same problem about insufficient allotment of budget for research into effectiveness of policy enforcement. According to the report, the country does not have the required data system and the infrastructure to carry out research to find out how effective drug control and enforcement policies have been. The system seems to be blindly allotting budget and there is no o find if money is being used by agencies that need it the most. Moreover, there is no effort to reduce consumption of drugs, find out why people take to drugs, and understand the social forces that make people take up such habits. There is also very little effort to understand how the drugs supply chain operates and how much drugs are actually consumed. Law enforcement agencies only rely on the seized quantities and there is no reliable estimate on how much contraband enters the market undetected.
Conclusion
A reading of the two texts shows that US law enforcement agencies are more interested in punishing the offenders rather than preventing the need for such crimes. With high allocation of budget for law enforcers, there is little research done to find out how effective the crime fighters are. The whole approach seems intent on deterrence rather than prevention and urgent reforms are needed in the way the policies are framed, implemented and reviewed by the senate. This does not mean that law enforcers should stop arresting offenders or that they are not efficient. The two articles just point out the need to urgently shift the perspective to meet the objective of reducing drug consumption and not increasing arrests.
References
NAS, 2001. Data Sorely Lacking on Effectiveness of Nation’s Drug-Enforcement Programs.
Shepard,Edward, M. Drug Enforcement and Crime: Recent Evidence from New York State: Southwestern Social Science Association. Social Science Quarterly. Volume 86, Number 2, 2005.