INCARCERATION IS COSTLY, BUT IT WORKS

Despite the current conventional wisdom to the contrary, the federal war on
drugs, when it has been pursued zealously in the past quarter century, has
been successful in decreasing the rates of illegal drug use.

President Reagan and the first President Bush escalated the war on drugs by
increasing inflation-adjusted federal spending for drug enforcement and
anti-drug education and prevention. During this 12-year escalation of the
war on drugs, bipartisan congressional majorities established mandatory
prison sentences for many federal drug offenders.

Under Reagan and Bush, the Department of Justice adopted tough anti-crime
policies that required federal prosecutors to push for lengthy drug
sentences. As a result, the average federal drug sentence went from about 4
1/2 years in 1980 to more than seven years in 1992.

In 1980, before Reagan escalated the war on drugs, about half of the
nation's high school seniors had used drugs within the last year (almost
all of them supplied by the street-level drug dealers some would
erroneously classify as insignificant and therefore mistakenly keep out of
prison). By 1992, only about one in four high school seniors used drugs
within the previous year.

Starting in 1993, President Clinton and his attorney general, Janet Reno,
de-escalated the war on drugs. One significant component of this
de-escalation was the adoption of more defendant-friendly plea bargaining
policies that lowered federal drug sentences. During the Clinton
presidency, drug use among high school seniors went up 50 percent.

Why are substantial prison sentences effective?

First, though the prospect of time in prison does not deter all potential
drug dealers, it does deter some of them. Interestingly, proponents of
alternatives to prison almost always suggest threatening those sentenced
with imprisonment if they fail to comply with the conditions of their
alternative sentences. If potential jail time does not deter dealers, why
bother?

Prisons also incapacitate drug traffickers. If you wanted to sell drugs,
would you choose to set up shop in a jail cell? You could peddle a lot more
dope if you had access to schools and streets.

Incarceration sometimes rehabilitates dealers who are also addicts. The
controlled environment and harsh living conditions inside prison, along
with prison drug treatment programs, help inmates kick their habits.

Finally, law enforcement officials can use potential prison sentences for
small dealers in their efforts to thwart bigger dealers. If a person caught
in the act of pushing dope has a realistic chance of avoiding prison
without cooperating with police, he will often choose that option.

Without a doubt, incarceration of drug dealers is an expensive proposition,
but it works. Recent history teaches us that de-escalation of tough drug
law enforcement, including less imprisonment, leads to wider drug abuse,
with all of its tragic and expensive consequences.