Injustice and Quantity over Quality in Searches, Arrests, and Incarceration

Moskos points out the priority of police officers on number of arrests—quantity over quality. Quantity over feasibility. Quantity over affordability. It is expensive for the government to support and run all of our jails. Then again, that does not keep anyone really from expecting “criminals” to be incarcerated. One aspect of Moskos's article “Collars for Dollars” that was especially disconcerting was the inattention to safety issues and prioritizing of drug offenses above violent crimes. The article points out that drug offenses are prioritized in this way because it is an easy, measurable success. Call me crazy, but I would prefer lower homicide rates to lower rates of drug abuse any day. Perhaps they go hand-in-hand in many cases, but my point—and the point of the man quoted at the end of the article—is: police should be keeping as many people as safe as possible. They cannot do that as it currently stands. And they are wasting resources arresting so many people who may not be harmful. They also waste resources simply searching so many people and so inefficiently.

As a middle-class white woman, I cannot recall ever having feared or mistrusted a police officer. My parents have friends who are police officers; when I get pulled over, officers call me “ma'am.” And, for the most part, I have nothing to worry about—because I am not a target. According to Alexander, police would say I have not been searched because I do not fit the profile. Alexander suggests instead that I have not been searched because no police officers have felt like it. Police officers, according to Alexander, search whoever they want to on whatever pretense they can come up with. Sadly, that is not hard to believe.

We live in a country that is a bit over-eager to “protect”—so eager that, in fact we drain ourselves of resources by incarcerating people and disabling them from contributing to society and the economy via employment and consumerism. We as a society do the same thing when we alienate drug addicts. By criminalizing drug use, we alienate a huge population of people that could also contribute. We disable them by not offering alternatives and means of becoming clean aside from incarceration.

Drug issues seem more constantly relevant; there are constantly some new arguments or actions for legalization of drug use, especially marijuana. This is for good reason, too, because drugs are a formerly underutilized economic resource. One argument, and a good one at that, is that legalization of marijuana for instance would allow the government to tax the drug, which would bring in a considerable amount of additional tax revenue. On top of that, costs of incarcerating people involved in drug dealing and use would be wiped out because they would no longer be criminals.