CJ 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Police Corruption, Rodney King
Crime Control Revisited (1970s–1990s)
As the political mood of the country turned conservative during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s,
crime control dominated the police agenda in the United States.
Controlling street crime
American police experimented with a variety of programs designed to control street
crime. Scientific evaluations show that these police programs reduce crime:
1. Extra police patrols in high crime hot spots.‐
2. Repeat offender units that monitor repeat offenders on the streets.
3. Efforts to arrest employed suspects who engage in domestic abuse (studies
indicate that arrests are more likely to deter employed spouse abusers than
unemployed abusers).
Other police programs do not work. These include neighborhood watch programs,
which fail to reduce burglaries, and police crackdowns on drug markets, which fail to
reduce violent crime or disorder for more than a few days.
Controlling illegal drugs
Controlling drugs and fighting drug related crime are among the major responsibilities of‐
law enforcement at all levels of government. Police involvement in the drug war is
costly. First, economic costs are staggering. For example, federal expenditures for drug
control rose from $1.5 billion in 1981 to $18 billion in 1998. Drug related law ‐
enforcement consumes more than half of this budget. Treatment, education, crop
control, interdiction (interception of drugs), research, and intelligence account for the
rest. Second, police involvement in the drug war exacerbates police corruption. Of
course, police corruption is nothing new. Police corruption related to liquor laws when
alcohol prohibition was in effect. The same type of prohibition style corruption is ‐
rampant in drug enforcement today. More than 100 drug corruption cases involving law
enforcement officers are prosecuted in federal and state courts each year. Third, the
drug war poisons police community relations. Some lawyers, activists, and politicians ‐
claim the drug war is racist. As proof of police racism, they assert that in some cities the
main targets in the war on drugs are minority neighborhoods and minority suspects.
Fourth, strict enforcement of the drug laws may actually make the drug problem worse
by boosting drug prices and by increasing profits for drug traffickers.
Police drug education programs have not fared much better than the law enforcement ‐
programs. During the 1990s, thousands of school districts across America involved the
police teaching DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Recent evaluations show
DARE does not prevent students from using illegal drugs.
The déjà vu character of police brutality
Just as police brutality reared its ugly head in the first big city police departments in the
19th century, it resurfaced in many U.S. cities during the 1990s. After the Rodney King
incident, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held hearings
in six cities on the issue of police brutality of minorities. A report written by the Criminal
Justice Institute at Harvard Law School documents examples of excessive force, verbal
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Document Summary
As the political mood of the country turned conservative during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, crime control dominated the police agenda in the united states. American police experimented with a variety of programs designed to control street crime. These include neighborhood watch programs, which fail to reduce burglaries, and police crackdowns on drug markets, which fail to reduce violent crime or disorder for more than a few days. Controlling drugs and fighting drug related crime are among the major responsibilities of law enforcement at all levels of government. Police involvement in the drug war is costly. For example, federal expenditures for drug control rose from . 5 billion in 1981 to billion in 1998. Drug related law enforcement consumes more than half of this budget. Treatment, education, crop control, interdiction (interception of drugs), research, and intelligence account for the rest. Second, police involvement in the drug war exacerbates police corruption.
