Are we really getting tough on crime or have we created a crime wave and turned it into a business?

If getting tough on crime is putting people in jail then we are doing a good job. We are a country that has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the worlds prison inmates.

Our jail/prison population has gone from 503,586 in 1980 to over 2.1 million in 2004, which is a 317 percent increase in 24 years.

However, it appears that getting tough on crime is not really about crime, it’s about fortifying an election year initiative called the War on Drugs.The birth of a crime wave.

The War on Drugs, like Prohibition, was a political expedient used to demonize the opposition and acquire constituencies in presidential elections. While alcohol and drugs were not key issues in themselves, the relevance of these voting blocs was heightened by existing armed conflicts that were also perceived as threats. Prohibition was linked to World War I and Drugs to Vietnam and the larger war on communism.

The period leading up to World War I represented a cultural conflict between temperance-focused “White Anglo Saxon Protestants” and “beer drinking immigrants”.

In the end, the depression served as the cauldron that destroyed the old power structure, buried Prohibition and created a new power structure predisposed to the support and use of alcohol.

Both Prohibition and the War on Drugs were similar in that they provoked an increased disrespect for the law. Likewise, the police, the courts and penal system were overburdened with addiction-related cases.

There were two hangovers from Prohibition. The first was the rise of organized crime. Second was the drugs made illegal during Prohibition remained illegal.

Organized crime did not go out of business with the end of Prohibition. In 1933, they held a national convention in Atlantic City where they focused on organization as well as products to market. Drugs were one such product.