Spengler on what James Q. Wilson would tell Mexico. An excerpt:
The bad news is always the good news. There are fewer crimes because more criminals are in jail. A great deal is made over the fact that a million of America's 7.3 million prison inmates were convicted of non-violent (mainly drug-related) crimes. It is much easier to convict a dealer for selling a modest amount of drugs to an undercover police officer, though, than to catch the dealer in a violent act. Drug gangs are violent criminal conspiracies, and most of the prison inmates convicted of selling drugs promoted such violence.
With due respect, I don't think the author understands Mexico, or the nature of the "drug war" in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteThis is not about some guy selling cocaine in a street corner. This war is about satisfying the American hunger for drugs. Mexico is just a conduit for drugs. There is no petty criminal in a street corner. We have private armies ready to kill, dismember and make a public example of anyone who gets in their way. No content with that, the victim's family is also at grave risk.
What Mexico is going through is nothing like any American city.
Add to that the profound incompetence and corruptness of the police force (combined with their desire to keep themselves and their families alive), and you have an entirely different problem than anything in the USA.
Addressing the problem as if it were an epidemic of petty street crime simply shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole problem.
Not sure why the author goes on to mention Carlos Slim, as if the crime problem in and of itself were not big enough.
These are profoundly sad times in Mexico, not to mention dangerous. The good old days were when we had the petty (by "petty" I mean the victim does not die) street crime the author seems to want to address.