Private prison group ends contracts with Mississippi

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In the wake of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional facility scandal, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced that GEO Group — one of the largest private prison corporations in the U.S. — will no longer operate three correctional facilities in the state.  By July 20, the corporation will no longer manage the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional, East Mississippi Correctional, or the Marshall County Correctional facilities.

In 2010, reports emerged of sexual abuse, improper medical care, extended prisoner isolation, and violence among inmates at the Walnut Grove facility.  These reports sparked a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center.  The lawsuit resulted in the removal of youth from the Walnut Grove facility. According to the Associated Press, MDOC also had concerns about incidents that occurred at the other GEO Group facilities in the state.

This could be an opportunity for MDOC to re-think its practice of contracting with private prison corporations.  Unfortunately, it may be a lost opportunity.  It seems that Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps is still interested in privatization.  Epps told the Associated Press that MDOC is “reaching out to those private operators” in their search for new groups to manage the three facilities.  See the article below for more details.  -MWN

Florida group to end Miss. prison contracts

BY JACK ELLIOTT JR.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Department of Corrections says GEO Group Inc., one of the country’s largest private prison operators, will no longer manage three facilities in Mississippi.

On Thursday, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company said it was backing out of a contract to manage the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near the Lost Gap community by July 19. Company officials told The Associated Press on Friday that it had nothing else to say.

Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps told the AP on Friday that the department felt it might get a better price if all three prisons were presented as a package to other corrections management companies.

Epps said he would expect GEO Group to end its ties to the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Walnut Grove and Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs by July 20.

“We feel this may be a golden opportunity to provide a better price for the taxpayers of the state and at the same time maybe do a better job in the operation of the facilities,” Epps said. “That’s what I would like to see.” (more…)

Land’s apology doesn’t impress Black Southern Baptists

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The Reverend Dwight McKissic

By Alan Bean

Stories can bring us together, and they can drive us apart.  Unfortunately, narratives related to racial justice almost always reveal a yawning gulf between white and minority perception.  I have never seen a single narrative separate America into polarized camps like the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman affair.

Richard Land, the head of the ethics division of the Southern Baptist convention, recently apologized for remarks about the Martin-Zimmerman case that have enraged Black Southern Baptist leaders.  The Rev. Dwight McKissic, the Arlington, Texas pastor calling for Land’s ouster, isn’t buying what he calls a “non-apology-apology“. 

  • Land hasn’t apologized for calling Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson “race hustlers” and “ambulance chasers” because they responded to requests for help from Trayvon Martin’s parents. 
  • Land hasn’t apologized for accusing President Barack Obama of ginning up support in the black electorate by commenting on the Martin case. 
  • Land hasn’t apologized for suggesting that black males deserve to be racially profiled because black men are statistically more likely to engage in acts of violence. (more…)

Osler: The Five Cardinal Sins of Progressive Activists

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 In traditional organizing, advocates work to empower one group of people prevail over another group of people.  You might be trying to help labor wrest concessions from management; or you might be trying to fire up the base so a blue candidate can defeat the red team.  Inevitably, the organizing game is conceived in adversarial, us-against-them terms.  Once you understand the realities of power, it is argued, simple persuasion doesn’t work.

I can think of instances in which entrenched power will only stand aside in the face of a still greater power.  The civil rights movement in Mississippi was like that.  On the other hand, without changed hearts and minds across white America, the civil rights movement could not have succeeded.

Mark Osler is about  changing hearts and minds; he’s not into forcing people to accept your agenda whether they want to or not.  There is much to be said for this approach.  Progressives lose public policy fights when the public is swayed by fear-based arguments.  Unless we address the fear, we can’t shift the debate in our direction.  When you live between Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas, you understand this instinctively.

We must empower the powerless, but must this involve pissing off the powerful?  And if the powerful are really pissed off, how long will our victory persist?

These questions lie at the heart of professor Osler’s “The Five Cardinal Sins of Progressive Activists”.  Highly recommended AGB

The Five Cardinal Sins of Progressive Activists

By Mark Osler

I’m a sinner. At one time or another, in the course of my own advocacy (on the death penalty and other issues), I have committed each of the five sins I am about to describe. In fact, so have most who work in advocacy, whether they are progressive, conservative, or located somewhere else along the political spectrum.

We live in a world that too often values conflict over solutions, and loud voices over wise ones. Avoiding the mistakes described below may not only make you more effective, but help make our public discourse more civil and productive.

1) Speaking mostly to those who agree with you
Over and over, I have seen the same pattern: an advocacy group gets some funding, and then uses the money to host a conference which gathers together large numbers of people who agree with the position of that advocacy group. It’s rewarding, of course, and reaffirming, but what a waste of resources! If the point of advocacy is to change minds, it is almost always a mistake to direct our arguments to those who already agree with us. If you aren’t talking to people who either disagree with you or haven’t made up their mind, you aren’t really doing advocacy work. (more…)

Richard Land’s Trayvon problem deepens

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By Alan Bean

Update: Richard Land has issued an apology for the remarks referenced in this post.

Southern Baptist leader Richard Land says he is the victim of a media mugging.  First the Nashville Tennessean characterized Land’s incendiary comments on his own radio show as a “rant”.  Now a Baylor-based blogger claims that the Baptist ethicist’s rant was plagiarized.

Many of the words that he uttered during his radio show were taken VERBATIM – yes, WORD-FOR-WORD – from a Washington Times column penned by conservative commentator Jeffrey Kuhner. Kuhner’s column titled “Obama foments racial division” was published on March 29.

Land has apologized for failing to give proper attribution, but continues to lash out at the liberal media.  This brief excerpt from an article in the Nashville Tennessean will tell you what the Southern Baptist spokesman is so upset about.

Some consider statements made Saturday by the convention’s top policy representative on his national radio show a setback. On Richard Land Live!,Land accused black religious leaders — whom he called “race hustlers” — and President Barack Obama of using the shooting death of an African-American teen in Florida for election-year gains.

“This will be vetted in court, not in a mob mentality that’s been juiced up by Al Sharpton, who is a provocateur and a racial ambulance chaser of the first order, and aided and abetted by Jesse Jackson,” Land said on the show.

And, on Obama’s statement that, if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old victim, Land said: “The president’s aides claim he was showing compassion for the victim’s family. In reality, he poured gasoline on the racialist fires.”

The Rev. Maxie Miller, a Florida Baptist Convention expert in African-American church planting, was incredulous when he heard about the comments.

“At no time have I been embarrassed of being a Southern Baptist or a black Southern Baptist,” Miller said. “But I’m embarrassed because of the words that man has stated.”

Richard Land claims he should be immune from charges of racial insensitivity because he had a large hand in drafting the SBC’s official apology for slavery and Jim Crow.  According to the Associated Baptist Press, the 1995 statement read in part: (more…)

Junk science in the courtroom

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By Alan Bean

A feature length investigative piece in the Washington Post reports that FBI forensic experts regularly present overblown and inaccurate testimony at trial.  The problem is especially acute, the article suggests in the case of hair examination testimony.  When DOJ studies uncovered flawed forensic testimony, the article claims, the information was turned over to prosecutors and was often kept from defendants and their attorneys.

Here are some highlights from the five-page article: (more…)

Is the Trayvon Martin case about race or guns?

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IN an interview with CNN, Bill Cosby argues that the Trayvon Martin case is more about guns than race.  If George Zimmerman was scared and carried a gun to ease his fear, Cosby says, it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t a racist.  The question is, who taught him to be afraid, and who taught him that carrying a gun would solve his problem?   You can find a video of CNN’s interview with Cosby clicking here and scrolling down.

Mark Osler and Jeanne Bishop begin their CNN opinion piece by seconding Cosby’s motion.  They aren’t saying that racial profiling wasn’t involved in the Martin case; but Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is the big issue:  “This law is grounded in a factual error and a deeply flawed principle,” Osler and Bishop believe. “The factual error is that a proliferation of handguns makes us safer. The flawed principle is that somehow the right to bear arms needs to be enlarged to a right to resolve disputes with guns.”

Trayvon Martin case also about guns

Jeanne Bishop and Mark Osler

(CNN) — As criminal attorneys, we know that tragic cases very often bring festering social issues into public view. Bill Cosby was right: The Trayvon Martin case brings to the surface troubling questions not only about race but also about the role of handguns in our society. (more…)

Baptist leader defends racial profiling

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Richard Land

By Alan Bean

Media narratives are conversation starters; they energize American opinion leaders to reveal their true colors.  And when those true colors come shining through, it ain’t always pretty.

Two Associated Press stories appeared side-by-side in the print edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this morning.  In the first, Richard Land, the semi-official mouthpiece of the Southern Baptist Convention, condemned black pastors like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for rallying to the defense of Trayvon Martin’s parents in a crude attempt to gin up the vote for a black president who is in “deep, deep, deep trouble.” 

According to the article, Land “defended the idea that people are justified in seeing young black men as threatening because a black man is ‘statistically more likely to do you harm than a white man.'”

Asked to comment on Land’s remarks, the Rev. Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, said Land’s rash comments have set back Southern Baptist attempts to bridge the racial divide.  McKissic is so incensed, he is threatening to introduce a resolution at the SBC’s June convention calling for the denomination to repudiate Land’s position.  “If they don’t, we’re back to where we were 50 years ago.”

In the second article,  Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, lashed out at the media for focusing obsessively on racially charged violence while ignoring the victims of routine violent crime.  Violent crime is a fact of life across America, LaPierre opined,  “but the media, they don’t care. Everyday victims aren’t celebrities. They don’t draw ratings, don’t draw sponsors. But sensational reporting from Florida does.”

The conflation of the NRA and the SBC suggests an appropriate response to Dr. Land: “Statistics don’t kill people; people kill people.”  The fact that George Zimmerman didn’t see a lot of young black men in his gated community did not give him the right to pack heat, stalk his victim, and spark a dangerous confrontation.  It matters not whether Trayvon Martin resorted to violence; Zimmerman was the sole author of the encounter and bears responsibility for Martin’s death.

Which brings me to Mr. LaPierre.  It is certainly true that the vast majority of American homicides leave little media footprint and that the victims of these crimes are left to grieve alone.  The Martin case wouldn’t have been newsworthy if George Zimmerman had been arrested.  In fact, until Trayvon’s parents decided to take their case to the nation, the media ignored the fact that Zimmerman walked away from what is now considered a second degree murder without consequence.

Dr. Land’s inability to empathize with his black Baptist colleagues becomes particularly striking when you try to imagine the SBC leader taking on the NRA.  The Trayvon Martin case isn’t just about racial profiling; it’s also about dangerous Stand Your Ground laws that have received bipartisan support in a number of state.  Can we imagine Dr. Land excoriating his Republican bed mates for supporting dangerous legislation that has allowed a number of gang members to walk away without so much as a slap on the wrist when their beefs get out of control and some mother’s son lies gasping in a pool of his own blood?

Land would never take on the NRA.  Sharpton and Jackson stand with president Obama, not because they agree with him on every issue (they don’t), but because the Republican Party has no tolerance for civil rights leaders.  You can be black and Republican, but only if you aren’t concerned about racial justice. 

It should also be said, that both Sharpton and Jackson have regularly been involved in public events designed to tackle the problem of gang violence and black-on-black violence.  If the media fails to give these initiatives the attention they deserve, the Reverends cannot be faulted.

The Trayvon Martin case didn’t create the lamentable cleavage between black and white Baptists, but mirror image reactions to the story have certainly exposed the racial divide in religious America.

Connecticut abolishes the death penalty, but does it matter?

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By Alan Bean

Yesterday Connecticut became the 17th state to abolish the death penalty.  That’s good news.  But not great news. 

As this helpful article in the New York Times points out: “the death penalty is largely being abolished where it is not being imposed and remains largely untouched where it is.  And the death penalty map is beginning to resemble the familiar red state-blue state one.”

Specifically, “The number of executions nationally dropped to 43 last year from 98 in 1998. Since executions resumed in 1976 after being halted by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,060 in the South, 150 in the Midwest, 75 in the West and 4 in the Northeast.”

If you want to know if a person is likely to pull the blue or red lever at election time, ask for an opinion on the death penalty.  It’s as good a single issue indicator as you are likely to find.

On the other hand, support for the death penalty is falling, largely, I would argue, because the homicide rate has been dropping since 1993.  When support for the death penalty briefly dipped below 50% in the early 1960s, the homicide rate was low by historical standards.  Between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, homicide rates exploded as did support for the death penalty. 

As violent crime recedes, support for the ultimate penalty is softening.  There were 24,530 murders in America in 1993; in 2010 there were only 14,748, just a few more than in 1969 when the US population was considerably smaller.  In 1963, as support for the death penalty dipped below 50%, the nation saw only 8,640 murders. 

Unfortunately, the death penalty is so popular in the South that we are unlikely to see abolition anytime soon.  Although southern states are executing fewer people since the advent of life without parole laws, our prisons are filling up with old men who have lived most of their lives in prison and will die there.  A growing number of lifers are still in their teens.  Abolishing the death penalty is a laudable goal; but capital punishment isn’t the only symptom of a punitive consensus that has controlled American public policy for half a century.

The popularity of capital punishment in the states of the old Confederacy suggests there is more in play here than murder rates.  In fact, if you take a map highlighting the rate of lynching during the Jim Crow era and superimpose it over a map showing the frequency of executions in the United States, the correspondence is almost exact.  States that lynched a lot of people are now executing a lot of people.  Is this merely a coincidence?  Alas, it is not.

In Connecticut Vote, Death Penalty Critics Don’t See Major Shift

By

There were references to being a “tipping point” and reflecting a “paradigm shift” in the use of capital punishment when the State House voted this week to make Connecticut the 17th state — the 5th in five years — to eliminate the death penalty in future prosecutions.

“It’s definitely part of a larger trend, certainly with other states including New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois abolishing executions through similar processes, and with a decline in executions around the country,” Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national research group critical of the death penalty, said Thursday. “There’s less public support. So the trends are in the same direction.”

But even staunch death penalty opponents acknowledge that the vote was not indicative of a nationwide about-face. Rather, it was a reflection of capital punishment’s erosion in the Northeast, a trend toward fewer executions nationally and the intensification of the death penalty’s status as a phenomenon overwhelmingly rooted in the South.

The number of executions nationally dropped to 43 last year from 98 in 1998. Since executions resumed in 1976 after being halted by the Supreme Court, there have been 1,060 in the South, 150 in the Midwest, 75 in the West and 4 in the Northeast.

During that time, Connecticut had one execution, Michael Bruce Ross, a serial killer who was put to death in 2005.

So the death penalty is largely being abolished where it is not being imposed and remains largely untouched where it is. And the death penalty map is beginning to resemble the familiar red state-blue state one.

Still, the nine hours of impassioned debate in the Connecticut House on Wednesday reflected how deeply the issues surrounding capital punishment resonate.

“I am for the Connecticut death penalty because it is retribution which accomplishes justice,” the House minority leader, Lawrence Cafero Jr., a Republican from Norwalk, said Wednesday. “I am not for the Connecticut death penalty because it accomplishes revenge.”

The Connecticut vote and debate, particularly in the wake of the Petit family home invasion and murders in Cheshire, reflected a cautious political bargain and a public apparently reluctant to give up the death penalty completely. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that 62 percent of Connecticut residents thought repeal was “a bad idea.”

The bill, which Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, said he would sign, does not apply to the 11 men now on death row, including the two Cheshire killers. Critics of the legislation, who are mostly Republican, called it hypocritical to outlaw capital punishment in the future while keeping it intact for those already sentenced.

“You either support the death penalty and taking somebody’s life or you don’t,” said Representative Themis Klarides, a Republican from Woodbridge. “You can’t support it for these guys, but not for these guys.”

Capital punishment is still an option in federal prosecutions, including in terrorism-related murder cases. Connecticut Republicans tried unsuccessfully on Wednesday to preserve the death penalty for terrorism cases prosecuted in state court, which tend to be less serious than those handled in federal court.

Death penalty opponents say Maryland could be the next state to repeal capital punishment. Kansas and Montana are among the states discussing it. California is likely to have a public referendum in November that will almost surely become the nation’s most high-profile debate over capital punishment.

The long-term strategy of death penalty opponents is to get more than half the states to repeal it and then file a challenge to the United States Supreme Court based on the Constitution’s prescriptions against “cruel and unusual punishment,” the second half of that dependent on only a minority of states employing it.

Still, 33 states and the federal government will maintain capital punishment after Connecticut’s abolition, and many of those are not receptive to repeal. Death penalty opponents also acknowledge that if the Supreme Court remains conservative, it is unlikely to embrace that argument.

Absent an improbable ban by the Supreme Court, death penalty opponents say it is hard to imagine anytime soon the end of capital punishment where it is most likely to be used.

“Nobody, not even the most pathological optimist, is saying abolition is right around the corner in any of the states of the old Confederacy,” said Denny LeBoeuf, the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.

Zimmerman prosecution shows the power of principled protest

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By Alan Bean

“We prosecute cases based on the relevant facts of each case and on the law of the state of Florida.”  So says State Attorney Angela B. Corey, the special prosecutor assigned to the George Zimmerman case.  It is unlikely that Zimmerman would ever have been charged had it not been for the national outcry that has rivetted attention on this case. 

Law enforcement and district attorneys dislike the Stand Your Ground law because it frustrates their efforts to arrest, investigate and prosecute cases in which the shooter claims self-defense.  But law enforcement was obviously intimidated by Stand Your Ground.  Even though Zimmerman jumped to unwarranted conclusions about Trayvon Martin, even though he defied a police dispatcher’s demand that he remain in his vehicle, even though Zimmerman clearly followed and confronted Martin, the appeal to self-defense worked like magic. 

Like any high-profile narrative, the Trayvon Martin case has revealed a troubling divide in public perception.   On one side of the fault line, people identify with George Zimmerman’s suspicion of young black males wearing hoodies.  On the other side, folks identify with a victim of racial profiling and vigilante justice. 

Those who identify with neither Zimmerman nor Martin generally take a “let the system handle it approach.”  Now that Zimmerman has been arrested it may appear that the dispassionate bystanders who trust established judicial processes called it right.  The Washington Post editorial below suggests, albeit cautiously, that the system is working as it should.  Zimmerman will have his day in court.  Prosecutors will have a hard time working around the prejudicial impact of the Stand Your Ground law.  A plea bargain may settle this thing.  Zimmerman’s mental issues may also surface as a major issue (the man is clearly unstable). 

But none of this would be happening apart from massive national protest. (more…)

George Will on drugs (and drug legalization)

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Should we legalize drugs?  Conservative pundit, George Will, lays out the arguments, con and pro, in two columns recently published in the Washington Post. 

I don’t always agree with Mr. Will, but he is the kind of conservative who is willing to admit the obvious failings of politicians on his side of the cultural divide, and he writes far better than most columnists, liberal or conservative, so, agree or don’t, you know what he’s driving at.

You won’t learn everything that needs to be said about the war on drugs in these two essays, and if you are a conservative with libertarian leanings you won’t find anything new.  But if you believe the war on drugs is worthwhile and winnable, please read on.  Will is no pot-smoking lefty; he just doesn’t want to spend $100,000 incarcerating a corner boy for a $100 transaction, and he doesn’t like supporting violent drug cartels.  AGB   

The drug legalization dilemma

By , Published: April 4

The Washington Post

The human nervous system interacts in pleasing and addictive ways with certain molecules derived from some plants, which is why humans may have developed beer before they developed bread. Psychoactive — consciousness-altering — and addictive drugs are natural, a fact that should immunize policymakers against extravagant hopes as they cope with America’s drug problem, which is convulsing some nations to our south.

The costs — human, financial and social — of combating (most) drugs are prompting calls for decriminalization or legalization. America should, however, learn from the psychoactive drug used by a majority of American adults — alcohol.

Mark Kleiman of UCLA, a policy analyst, was recently discussing drug policy with someone who said he had no experience with illegal drugs, not even marijuana, because he is of “the gin generation.” Ah, said Kleiman, gin: “A much more dangerous drug.” Twenty percent of all American prisoners — 500,000 people — are incarcerated for dealing illegal drugs, but alcohol causes as much as half of America’s criminal violence and vehicular fatalities.

Drinking alcohol had been a widely exercised private right for millennia when America tried to prohibit it. As a public-health measure, Prohibition “worked”: Alcohol-related illnesses declined dramatically. As the monetary cost of drinking tripled, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver declined by a third. This improvement was, however, paid for in the coin of rampant criminality and disrespect for law.

Prohibition resembled what is today called decriminalization: It did not make drinking illegal; it criminalized the making, importing, transporting or selling of alcohol. Drinking remained legal, so oceans of it were made, imported, transported and sold.

Another legal drug, nicotine, kills more people than do alcohol and all illegal drugs — combined. For decades, government has aggressively publicized the health risks of smoking and made it unfashionable, stigmatized, expensive and inconvenient. Yet 20 percent of every rising American generation becomes addicted to nicotine.

So, suppose cocaine or heroin were legalized and marketed as cigarettes and alcohol are. And suppose the level of addiction were to replicate the 7 percent of adults suffering from alcohol abuse or dependency. That would be a public health disaster. As the late James Q. Wilson said, nicotine shortens life, cocaine debases it.

Still, because the costs of prohibition — interdiction, mass incarceration, etc. — are staggeringly high, some people say, “Let’s just try legalization for a while.” Society is not, however, like a controlled laboratory; in society, experiments that produce disappointing or unexpected results cannot be tidily reversed.

Legalized marijuana could be produced for much less than a tenth of its current price as an illegal commodity. Legalization of cocaine and heroin would cut their prices, too; they would sell for a tiny percentage of their current prices. And using high excise taxes to maintain cocaine and heroin prices at current levels would produce widespread tax evasion — and an illegal market.

Furthermore, legalization would mean drugs of reliable quality would be conveniently available from clean stores for customers not risking the stigma of breaking the law in furtive transactions with unsavory people. So there is no reason to think today’s levels of addiction are anywhere near the levels that would be reached under legalization.

Regarding the interdicting of drug shipments, capturing “kingpin” distributors and incarcerating dealers, consider data from the book “Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know” by Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken. Almost all heroin comes from poppies grown on 4 percent of the arable land of one country — Afghanistan. Four South American countries — Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia — produce more than 90 percent of the world’s cocaine. But attempts to decrease production in source countries produce the “balloon effect.” Squeeze a balloon in one spot, it bulges in another. Suppress production of poppies or coca leaves here, production moves there. The $8 billion Plan Colombia was a melancholy success, reducing coca production there 65 percent, while production increased 40 percent in Peru and doubled in Bolivia.

In the 1980s, when “cocaine cowboys” made Miami lawless, the U.S. government created the South Florida Task Force to interdict cocaine shipped from Central and South America by small planes and cigarette boats. This interdiction was so successful the cartels opened new delivery routes. Tranquillity in Miami was purchased at the price of mayhem in Mexico.

America spends 20 times more on drug control than all the world’s poppy and coca growers earn. A subsequent column will suggest a more economic approach to the “natural” problem of drugs.

Should the U.S. legalize hard drugs?

By , Published: April 11

The Washington Post

Amelioration of today’s drug problem requires Americans to understand the significance of the 80-20 ratio. Twenty percent of American drinkers consume 80 percent of the alcohol sold here. The same 80-20 split obtains among users of illicit drugs.

About 3 million people — less than 1 percent of America’s population — consume 80 percent of illegal hard drugs. Drug-trafficking organizations can be most efficiently injured by changing the behavior of the 20 percent of heavy users, and we are learning how to do so. Reducing consumption by the 80 percent of casual users will not substantially reduce the northward flow of drugs or the southward flow of money.

Consider current policy concerning the only addictive intoxicant currently available as a consumer good — alcohol. America’s alcohol industry, which is as dependent on the 20 percent of heavy drinkers as they are on alcohol, markets its products aggressively and effectively. Because marketing can drive consumption, America’s distillers, brewers and vintners spend $6 billion on advertising and promoting their products. Americans’ experience with marketing’s power inclines them to favor prohibition and enforcement over legalization and marketing of drugs.

But this choice has consequences: More Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses or drug-related probation and parole violations than for property crimes. And although America spends five times more jailing drug dealers than it did 30 years ago, the prices of cocaine and heroin are 80 to 90 percent lower than 30 years ago.

In “Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know,” policy analysts Mark Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken argue that imprisoning low-ranking street-corner dealers is pointless: A $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, although a few years ago Washington, D.C., dealers earned an average of $30 an hour, today they earn less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25).

Dealers, a.k.a. “pushers,” have almost nothing to do with initiating drug use by future addicts; almost every user starts when given drugs by a friend, sibling or acquaintance. There is a staggering disparity between the trivial sums earned by dealers who connect the cartels to the cartels’ customers and the huge sums trying to slow the flow of drugs to those street-level dealers. Kleiman, Caulkins and Hawken say that, in developed nations, cocaine sells for about $3,000 per ounce — almost twice the price of gold. And the supply of cocaine, unlike that of gold, can be cheaply and quickly expanded. But in the countries where cocaine and heroin are produced, they sell for about 1 percent of their retail price in the United States. If cocaine were legalized, a $2,000 kilogram could be FedExed from Colombia for less than $50 and sold profitably here for a small markup from its price in Colombia, and a $5 rock of crack might cost 25 cents. Criminalization drives the cost of the smuggled kilogram in the United States up to $20,000. But then it retails for more than $100,000.

People used to believe enforcement could raise prices but doubted that higher prices would decrease consumption. Now they know consumption declines as prices rise but wonder whether enforcement can substantially affect prices.

Kleiman, Caulkins and Hawken urge rethinking the drug-control triad of enforcement, prevention and treatment because we have been much too optimistic about all three.

And cartels have oceans of money for corrupting enforcement because drugs are so cheap to produce and easy to renew. So it is not unreasonable to consider modifying a policy that gives hundreds of billions of dollars a year to violent organized crime.

Marijuana probably provides less than 25 percent of the cartels’ revenue. Legalizing it would take perhaps $10 billion from some bad and violent people, but the cartels would still make much more money from cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines than they would lose from marijuana legalization.

Sixteen states and the District have legalized “medical marijuana,” a messy, mendacious semi-legalization that breeds cynicism regarding law. In 1990, 24 percent of Americans supported full legalization. Today, 50 percent do. In 2010, in California, where one-eighth of Americans live, 46 percent of voters supported legalization, and some opponents were marijuana growers who like the profits they make from prohibition of their product.

Would the public health problems resulting from legalization be a price worth paying for injuring the cartels and reducing the costs of enforcement? We probably are going to find out.