DRUG-WAR HAWK RAISES SCARY IDEAS

Continuing our ongoing debate and discussion about the criminal-justice
system, today we hear from a man who, after years of fighting and studying
the drug war, believes it to be succeeding.

Mark Stelter is an associate professor of criminal justice at Montgomery
College. He also is a former Houston police officer and a former Harris
County assistant district attorney.

His opinion is based upon a combination of experience and scholarly
pursuits and backed by the numerous studies and statistics he can quote.

In our phone conversation and in his e-mail he did an excellent job of
explaining, in clear and concise terms, a point of view that obviously is
shared by a great many people. And I look forward to our next conversation
even though his conclusions absolutely scare the bejabbers out of me.

"To me," Stelter said, "the war on drugs is a surrogate for a war really
worth fighting -- the war on violent crime."

He explained that using prison to reduce crime is called "incapacitation,"
and since "wholesale incapacitation of the population is obviously a bad
idea," he suggests that we "should engage in `selective incapacitation.' "

Quoting studies that have shown 80 percent of crime is committed by 6
percent of the population, he said the goal of our prison policy should be
to identify the errant 6 percent, "and to incapacitate them, reform them or
do whatever it takes to get that 6 percent to cease their life of crime."

A War Really Worth Fighting

"If the war on drugs were simply about putting people who use drugs in
prison simply for using drugs, I would agree that this policy may need some
rethinking," Stelter said.

"However, if, by incarcerating drug users we are at the same time taking
burglars, robbers and rapists off the streets, then the war on drugs is a
worthy cause and has been a great success."

Explaining why he considers it "useful as a surrogate to incapacitate
habitual criminals," he said the number of people in prison on drug
offenses "has increased 50 percent in the last five years. The number of
people in prison for other offenses, such as burglary and robbery, has
increased only 11 percent in the last five years. Yet the burglary and
robbery rate has dropped about 30 percent in the last five years."

"When you take a crackhead off the street," he said, "you are not just
removing a drug user, you are also removing a burglar or a robber."

It causes him no discomfort that a result of the war on drugs is "great
numbers of people being incarcerated for drug offenses because we think
they are in all likelihood also perpetrators of violent crimes."

To back this, Stelter stated statistics that show "the removal of a
crackhead from the streets results in a direct reduction in serious crime.
Like all public policy, it is imperfect. For example, some individuals
arrested for DWI would have made it home safely without injuring anyone.
But we arrest people for DWI because there is a direct correlation between
individuals driving drunk and automobile fatalities. Same thing is true for
the war on drugs. There is a direct correlation between drug users and
violent crime."

Violent Crime Rooted In Drugs

Opponents of the drug war, Stelter knows, may ask if this is how we want to
treat someone who is not a violent criminal but merely uses cocaine.

"That individual may be better suited for treatment than for incarceration,
true, but it is certainly not an injustice to send a person to prison for
using cocaine," he said. "Even if the `only' crime he committed was the use
of cocaine, our laws are very clear on the consequences of using cocaine."

And so he concludes that the war on drugs has been a success: "Not only
because we are reducing the number of crack users in the U.S. but primarily
because with each arrest of a crack addict we are reducing, at an
astonishing rate, the number of burglaries and robberies in this country. I
sincerely believe that if we stopped the war on drugs we would see a
dramatic increase in burglaries and robberies ... the kinds of crimes even
the most lenient in our society are opposed to."

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with this policeman turned prosecutor
turned criminal-justice professor? Or does his assessment of our drug war
scare you as much as it does me?