Perhaps that's true at the state and federal level, but I strongly doubt it's true at the local level. Thumb through the police reports and the court dockets, and you mostly see penny-ante lifestyle violations--public intoxication, disorderly conduct, having a bad attitude, that sort of thing.
[WS:] True. Yet another sad evidence that bureaucratic law enforcement has replaced informal norms and controls in rudimentary tasks, such as maintenance of generally accepted standards of behavior. I think it is an outcome of the much larger problem of alienation by the life style into which we are pushed by profiteers and their friends in government.
People living in stable communities usually have stakes in respecting the norms accepted in that community. On the other hand, such communities tend to nudge and push transgressors into compliance through informal sanctions, instead of bashing them with stiff penalties. This creates a very intricate balance between the tendency to comply with the community norms, and going easy on transgressors, helping and nudging them into compliance with social norms, instead of treating them as outcasts left to their own devices.
This can be illustrated by the seeming paradox that societies that are more tolerant toward alcohol consumption tend to have lower alcoholism and related problems than societies that are more intolerant. What makes the difference is that in more tolerant societies transgressors are never fully abandoned and slapped with still penalties. Instead, there are always informal pressures and attempts to bring the transgressor back. At the same time, the transgressor is not repelled by stiff penalties and an outcast status, which makes him more likely to respond to these informal pressures.
Since the US communities were thoroughly decimated by suburban development, automobiles, and corporate life style requiring frequent relocations to follow profits, few people have stakes in any communities, and few "communities" - or rather residential settlements - have the informal means to "nudge" their members into compliance with their norms of behavior. "My home is my castle" and "I can do whatever I feel like" are the norms of behavior.
It is easy to see that in such situation the most likely outcome is the 'Hobbesian dilemma' - either a war of all against all, or a sovereign (law enforcement) stepping in to maintain peace law and order. So yes, it is sad that local law enforcement efforts concentrate mainly on controlling petty violations of everyday standards of conduct. OTOH, the absence of these petty law enforcement interventions would likely lead to even worse situation of chaos and war of all against all. (PS. I am reasonably sure that unlike John Thornton, I would not do very well in such a situation, thus I do not mind law enforcement that much, regardless of all its flaws).
>From that point of view, the "thin blue line" shtick sounds paradoxically
true. Law enforcement is the only thing that keeps a capitalism-engineered
society from disintegrating into complete chaos and war of all against all.
John Adams: I was thinking of my older best friend's son, who recently became a felon by virtue of two simple misdemeanor pot possession charges (one fifteen years ago, once recently) and a couple public intoxication charges . He missed a court date the week his mother finally died, and the judge decided that meant he needed to be a felon. He's now on four years probation, and I just know he's not going to make it without being sent to prison. If he'd been able to afford a lawyer at that hearing, perhaps it might've been different, but no--he's going to be fed to the machine, and he'll probably come out a criminal, which is good business for the court system.
[WS:] Yeah, been there done that. At certain point in my life I could not function without shooting up a few times a day. However, I also have a strong survival instinct. No matter how addicted I was, I always followed the basic rules of covering my ass and not exposing myself to unnecessary risks, like DUI, buying the stuff from unknown people, trying to make "little money" by selling the stuff, or failing to maintain personal hygiene and normal life style (none of my coworkers ever figured out the true reason behind my frequent "bathroom breaks" and sick calls.)
Therefore, I have little empathy with people who get caught and bitch about it. Of course, nobody wants to get caught, and I feel sorry for those who do. OTOH, one should always know what the risks of one's acts are and either do something to minimize them, or else abstain from the risky activity altogether if the risk seems too high for the person to bear. My experience with druggies, however, was that they tended to be reckless and oblivious to any consequences of their behavior, although I knew a few who were very careful.
However, I also think that our current drug laws are simply idiotic and counterproductive, just like our policy toward Cuba. I think that legalization of all mind-altering substances (no exceptions) and focus on institutional control of the negative outcomes of abuse would not only save us a lot of tax money wasted on war on drugs, but it would substantially reduce crime and addiction rates. Unfortunately, these idiotic drug policies are likely to continue, just like our idiotic policy toward Cuba, nearly twenty years after the end of the cold war. Since the US system resembles more deTocquevillean "tyranny of the majority" than Aristotelian democracy, nobody will ever dare to take the first step to change these idiotic policies without risking being eaten alive by demagogues. This system is really FUBAR and it will take a major shock to changes its course.
Wojtek