This is Your War on Drugs

Megan McArdle in THE ATLANTIC:--

"This is our nation's drug enforcement in a nutshell. We started out by banning the things. And people kept taking them. So we made the punishments more draconian. But people kept selling them. So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence . . . and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders. Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America better."

Dutch legal: Security vs. Privacy

NRC/International reports that a Dutch student has gone to court to get a passport without having his fingerprints added to a police data base.

And on the war on drugs, DutchNews.nl writes that a judge has told police to stop scanning car number plates in order to solve drugs crimes.

Surveillance State

Talk Left

Police Creating "Terror Tip Sheets" for National Database

Meet the new "Operation Pipeline." The brainchild of the LAPD, it's being used by police dpeartments [sic] nationwide to create a new national database of people engaging in suspicious behavior.

[...]

"Operation Pipeline" is the drug interdiction profiling program used on highways to search cars stopped for traffic violations when certain indicators are present. Some of the indicators... are laughable, others are completely inconsistent. In the first category: fast food wrappers in the car. In the latter: there was no visible luggage or there was too much visible luggage.

The LAPD takes the insanity one step further in an attempt to identify would-be terrorists via suspicious activity reports, called SARS.

[Continue reading about this absurdity here.]

DUTCH NEWS: HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED

NRC/international headline: Fewer addicts stealing bikes as crime falls. Yeah, about 12 years ago, I needed cheap transportation on an extended visit to Amsterdam and naively bought for a few guilders a very used (read: stolen) bicycle from a guy outside the Wibautstraat Metro station.

Property crime in the Netherlands has been falling for years. There are fewer bicycle and car thefts, fewer burglaries, and fewer incidences of pickpocketing. The downward trend has been particularly marked since 2002.

"Frequent offenders, often junkies, sometimes commit thirty offences a day. If they go to prison for two years, the number of offences in the area in which they work can drop considerably." The number of frequently offending drug addicts has also fallen since 1995. Addicts have a low life expectancy, and there are now relatively few new addicts.

A TRAGEDY OF ANIMAL AND HUMAN PROPORTIONS

THIS is not an example of "community policing" (thanks to Lotus).

DUTCH DRUG POLICY CURBED

Guardian reporting about Friday's announcement to ban "Majic Mushrooms" in The Netherlands. Talk Left discusses the ban.

A picture worth $100

BARRE/MONTPELIER Times Argus August 24, 2007 --

Cell phone picture of pot leads to bust

NEWPORT — A cell phone containing photographs of marijuana plants fell into the hands of police, who found their way to its owner and his growing operation, authorities said.

Peter Ste. Marie, 22, was charged with felony marijuana cultivation after admitting to growing about 20 plants for his use, Orleans County Deputy Sheriff Daniel Locke wrote in an affidavit.

An unidentified person found the phone and looked for pictures on it that might lead to the owner. When the person saw the marijuana plants pictured, the phone was turned over to the Sheriff's Department on Aug. 13. When police activated the phone, it showed the owner's name and the name of his business, Locke said.

The finder also told police there were pot plants growing off Stevens Mills Road, in Jay, near where the phone was found, according to Locke, who found about 30 plants growing on land owned by Ste. Marie's grandmother.

Ste. Marie, who told authorities his grandmother didn't know about the marijuana plants, pleaded not guilty to the cultivation charge Tuesday and was released on $100 bail.

There's a lesson to be learned in the case, Locke said Thursday.

"I don't think I'd be taking pictures of illegal things on my cell phone," he said.

Stupid Laws and Harsh Sentences

The Peking Duck shows how others see us: Another shining moment for the US justice system - Stupid laws and sentences have been hot topics here lately, and the latest example of a 17-year-old parolee sentenced to life imprisonment for testing positive for marijuana use is even more appalling - and terrifying - than our earlier discussion of another 17-year-old given a 10-year sentence for receiving a consensual blowjob.

But I have no illusions: For every horror story like this that the media expose, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of similar stories that don't get told, and where the victim is not so lucky. The wheels of the US justice system grind on, protecting us and punishing wrongdoers and making sure rule of law in America works as best it can. But God have mercy on the souls of the little people who get caught up in its cold, heartless machinery. Tragically but not at all surprisingly, the poorer they are, the more likely they are to get sucked into these legal black holes.