Chemical Weapons in the 'War on Drugs'

[Rakesh Bhandari]

According to an excellent WSJ story by Paulette Thomas "Making Crime Pay:
Triangle of Interests Creates Infrastructure To Fight Lawlessness" 5/12/94
[Thomas also wrote some excellent analysis of redlining], the federal crime
budget had increased from about $6B to almost $20B in a decade (and one
suspects it has taken off further since then due to that crime bill,
despite the brave opposition of Clinton and the House Democrats). She
details how many Cold War contractors had shifted to provisioning the war
on crime and describes the nexus of interests which benefit from and drive
the war on crime while reminding us how many people become locked up for
low level non violent offenses. I have never read Jeffrey Reiman's book on
how the poor get prison, only skimmed David Garland's award winning
sociological study of the penal system (in which he discusses the early
Frankfurt School's fascinating criminological studies, which--Dennis will
tell us--may not have been republished). Michael E's message reminds me of
how in Theories of Surplus Vlaue Marx ridicules how productive crime is by
describing all the industries it "grows" (in modern speak)--security
guards, locks, locksmiths, etc.
best, rakesh