The High Cost of Paying Hommage to Virtue

In Mexico, the bodies continue to pile up. By the count of Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Mora, over 8,100 people have died violent, drug trafficking-related deaths since Felipe Calderon became president in December 2006. The Brookings Institute recently published a Latin America report, "Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations," that includes a sizable section on drug trafficking- which they consider to be “at the core of organized crime in the hemisphere” – and which notes that, this year alone, the same number of people have died in Mexico as have died fighting for the United States in Iraq since the start of our war there almost six years ago. Increasingly, that seems like an understatement.

A quantitatively problematic turn of a long-simmering conflict has been accompanied by a qualitative one: bodies are now increasingly headless, pinned with narco-messages, or placed in very public places. Sometimes corpses are even physically arranged to form rough but explicit messages themselves. Today, in a front page story accompanied by a grainy mugshot, the LA Times reported on corpses in Tijuana that were found arranged to spell out “3 L”. Tijuana drug kingpin Teodoro Garcia Simental goes by the three-letter moniker Teo, and the arrangement was supposedly a message, both threat and boast, of his domination of the city.

The catalyzing combination of a steadily rising body count and a new level of viscerally disturbing gore has led to the focus of a considerable amount of American media attention on Mexico’s drug trafficking industry. Mexico is the new Colombia. Often, as today, that coverage is transmitted in simple narrative form. The violent end product of a toxic mix of factors- including an insatiable American appetite for illicit drugs, the lack of viable alternative livelihoods for many well-intentioned, supply-side citizens, and cross-border policies that have the effect of increasing inequality and enmity- is boiled down to the story of a particularly ruthless or fascinating drug kingpin. Today, proclaimed the LA Times, that man is Teodoro Garcia. We always seem to learn fascinating personal details: Teo supposedly likes to arrange private horse races, at which he bets heavily, at ranches outside of Ensenada.

As a literary device, the biographical news sketch has the advantage of breaking a complex tangle of issues into a manageable chunk of digestible information, convenient and accessible to a casual news-follower. For the same reason, it brings with it the danger of oversimplifying a multi-faceted problem, of reducing to black and white, hero and villain, a tricky interplay of factors and characters, and in the process distorting the way things really work. So, while such devices are understandably used to convey mass media news, they are disastrous as a basis for policy formulation.

Nonetheless, since the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the first real drug super-villain, in the early 1990s, this has been America’s approach to counternarcotics work. Taking out the kingpin and his cartel, or the kingpins and their cartels, will eliminate the supply of drugs in America, or at least reduce them to a level where prices are unaffordably high, the theory goes. Accordingly, when Escobar was finally hunted down and killed in 1993, there was a sense, according to John Carnevale, then budget director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, that this military triumph was “a big part of how we would go about winning the War on Drugs.”

History has not been kind to that vision. Escobar’s Medellin Cartel was merely replaced by the Cali Cartel (rumored to have colluded with Colombian security forces against him to eliminate their chief business competitor). The center of the drug trafficking world eventually shifted to the Caribbean, and then to Mexico, and drug kingpins continued to be killed, and their organizations dismantled, at an impressive rate. Still, new groupings of traffickers, ever more inventive and sophisticated, kept popping up. Now, 15 years after Escobar’s demise, cocaine prices in the United States (according to Brookings calculations) are lower than ever, which suggests that the flood of drugs north remains unabated, and has maybe even increased.

Until Teo Garcia made the front page, the drug super-villain of the moment has been Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. The story of "El Chapo", or "Shorty," and his rise in Culiacan, on Mexico’s Pacific coast 650 miles south of the border, formed the foundation for recent articles in New Yorker and Rolling Stone that explored the Mexican crisis, and political attention has lately been focused on his reigning Sinaloa Cartel. Guzman, 53 years old, married an 18 year old beauty queen last year; he also reportedly likes to stay up late drinking and dancing at his Sinaloa hill country hideouts. While El Chapo and his fellow 'capos' may have colorful personal lives that provide fodder for fascinating character studies, they don’t provide the key to efficient counternarcotic strategies, or ways to reduce the damage of drug use and abuse.

More focus and attention, it seems, needs to be directed to less flashy, though more substantively important, underlying factors. For instance, 2,000 guns cross the border from the United States, where they are legal, to Mexico, where they are not, on a daily basis. This becomes very significant when you consider that, according to the ATF and their Mexican counterparts, approximately 90% of the weapons that are the physical means of Mexican drug violence originate in the United States.

The Brookings report ends by recommending that the United States “undertake a comprehensive, cross-country evaluation of counternarcotics policies,” which it concludes are “failing by most objective measures.” America’s drug war is “more a balloon than a battlefield,” and it seems like the sooner U.S. policymakers realize that, and that every Pablo they kill is going to beget a Chapo or Teo, the sooner they can begin preparing an effective response.

Don't Mix Crime and Politics

Check out the Daily Show's lengthy riff (12/10/08) on crime and politics in the context of the Rod Blagojevich implosion in Illinois. Jon Stewart compares the imprisonment rate of Illinois governors to murderers (point out that the odds of staying free are higher for the latter). He also compared Blagojevich to a boogey man figure from medieval German fairy tales, making the latent reference to the highly politicized field of sex offenders, a theme Stewart then made explicit by shifting into a satirical special news segment for children, ill-tabbed "Jon Stewart touches kids."

Nicely underscoring the irony that governors as criminals (and presidents one might add since four of the last eight of so presidents have been at least linked to crimes that could result in prison, two of them actually facing impeachment charges), is just the other side of an executive branch that has made fear of crime a major foundation for its style of rule, Stewart shows a snippet of Patrick Fitzgerald opining that people get into trouble mixing politics and crime. Stewart points out that the same could be said of crime and mothers day.

Infrastructure Nation: The City is Back

I watched President Elect Barack Obama's Saturday morning "radio" broadcast video on U-Tube (see it here) twice this morning (the second time, after my 11 year old daughter showed me how to make it fill my laptop screen was even more interesting). Anyone wishing, hoping, to find that Barack will not shrug off the FDR comparisons will find much to like here. No civilian conservation corps, but as elements of what he promises to be a much bigger plan, this morning's message signaled a willingness to move federal investment through multiple pathways into energy saving and mission enhancing infrastructure and technology spending. Federal buildings will get energy upgraded (a nice move that will make sure that something visible is going on in almost every big city in America). State's will get money to spend on highways and schools, but only if they spend it quickly. More money will flow into wiring hospitals and schools, whether through states or some other vessels is not clear.

Like FDR, Barack Obama's one step forward always has a bit of a half step back. In his 2.5 million jobs created or saved, I thought I heard a watering down of the number that has been out for a week.

Like FDR setting matters. Barack Obama spoke from a desk with curtains behind him slightly open to reveal that he was high up, presumably in one of Chicago's downtown skyscrapers. Behind him on one of those grey Chicago winter mornings that I remember all too well having grown up there, snake lighted streets and highways and slumbering neighborhoods. When was the last time we had a President so identified with urban America (something intertwined with but not exhausted by his race)?

When he spoke of the real families behind the more than half a million jobs lost in November, for the first time in a long time one could be sure that those families included the very substantial portion of the American population living at or near the urban core of metropolitan areas with more then one or two million people (I'm no demographer), and not just the morning in America small towns and suburbs.

Even more important, cities for Obama, like Chicago, are not a "problem" of poverty and crime to be solved by some federal "medicine" as concerned suburbanites look on, as they have been for Democratic presidents since LBJ. Instead, cities, like his Chicago, are centers of expertise for problem solving, and platforms for low carbon, high content life styles.

Crown Prince of Crime Control? A Ray of Hope in a New Cabinet

As American government was transformed around the problem of crime in the 1960s, one of the most significant and fateful development was the morphing of the attorney general into the nation's "top law enforcement officer." Once a quasi-judicial officer with a special brief to defend the rule of law within the administration, the attorney general became a veritable crown prince of crime control, astride an ever growing law enforcement and punishment behemoth (at least until the formation of Homeland Security cleaved off some chunks, but that's another story).

Actual attorneys general have varied in how much they took up that potentiality. Some from both parties emphasized crime fighter aspect, including Robert Kennedy (who served under JFK and LBJ) and Edwin Meese (who served under Reagan). Others were more concerned to restore the rule of law job (like Ford's AG, Edward Levi), or were simply too involved in political machinations to bother (like the recent Alberto Gonzalez).

There are some encouraging signs that new appointee Eric Holder may be more in the Ed Levi camp than the Ed Meese (and G-d knows the rule of law could use some bolstering).

In introducing Holder at Monday's press conference (December 1, 2008, read the NYT transcript here), President Elect Obama mentioned crime, but not the "usual suspects."

Eric Holder has the talent and commitment to succeed as attorney everyone from his first day on the job, which is even more important in a transition that demands vigilance. He has distinguished himself as a prosecutor, a judge, and a senior official. And he is deeply familiar with the law enforcement challenges we face from terrorism to counterintelligence, from white-collar crime to public corruption.

During his own remarks, AG nominee Holder seemed to suggest a wider range of interests then crime.

I also look forward to working with the men and women of the Department of Justice to revitalize the department's efforts in those areas where the department that's unique capabilities and responsibilities in keeping our people safe and ensuring fairness and in protecting our environment.

When Holder did mention crime in his statement, he emphasized the lead role of state and local government, a good sign, since leaders at the state and especially the local level have a much more nuanced view of crime problems and can craft less harmful solutions.

We will need to interact with our state and local partners in new innovative ways to help them solve the other issues that they confront on a daily basis. National security concerns are not defined only by the challenges created by terrorists abroad but also by criminals in our midst, whether they be criminals located on the street or in a board room.

Photo Credit: Scott Olson, Getty Images, USA Today

V is for Victory

"Remember, remember, the Fourth of November"

There is a lot to be sorry about what happened Tuesday, especially Prop 8 and 9 here in California (on Prop 8 see my other blog, on Prop 9 see future postings here). But let that regret not dampen the spirit of renewed citizenship expressed in the massive lines of voters and early voters. There is little doubt that this will be remembered as a pivotal election like '32, like '80 in which a fundamental governing change of course began.

At first, this will not look like a repudiation of governing through crime. The political neuro-network of knowledge and power links that tie Americans to their fears of crime remain potent and Obama was careful never to trigger them (McCain tried to use it against Obama but failed).

What we can hope for is the emergence of a new governing platform, one I suspect will be based on the need to rebuild and green America's infrastructure. Once this gets going it will begin to grow a knowledge power network of its own that will compete with an overtime outgrow governing through crime.

Vote

I'm reminded this morning of a poster that resided on my bedroom wall sometime in the mid-1970s. My father had brought it back from a trip to London. Two police officers were violently arresting a young man dressed in the standard "punk" style of that era. Underneath the text read: "Whoever you voted for, the government got in." It was signed by an anarchist party whose name eludes me. Whoever (and in CA, whatever) you vote for tomorrow, governing through crime will continue.

There are several measures on the California ballot, however, that can in some degree begin to process of retracting public affirmation from the crime war, as well as gauging the underlying strength of its hold on the way people imagine themselves as citizens.

Proposition 5:NONVIOLENT DRUG OFFENSES. SENTENCING, PAROLE AND REHABILITATION. INITIATIVE STATUTE

If you produced one of those cool GPS social maps that geographers work in these days, that showed the geographic locations where California's 170,000 state prisoners lived before they went to prison, you would see that it is highly concentrated in several very precise neighborhood locations in the large cities (and in many small ones). If you then added data on the location of drug treatment placements (not to mention mental health treatment),you would see that these same neighborhoods that send people to prison, have comparatively few of these assets.

This initiative should pay for itself while possibly saving us billions in collateral court imposed mandates on prisons (see other postings on this blog) by breaking up this dynamic. By allowing drug addicted state prisoners to receive treatment in the community, proposition 5 would help stop the revolving door of parole in California through which thousands of non-violent offenders go back and forth to prison. Even the Governor has called this revolving door a problem.

Why isn't the Governor supporting this. Why is every living ex-governor opposing it. The long answer is in chapter 2 of Governing through Crime. Suffice it to say that being the chief champion of a public recast as crime victims, in their demands for vengeance and security has become the lifeblood of political executives. As prosecutors-in-chief, governors oppose anything that would reduce the punitive discretion of prosecutors.

PROPOSITION 6: POLICE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT FUNDING. CRIMINAL PENALTIES AND LAWS. INITIATIVE STATUTE

This is vintage governing through crime. It locks up money for law enforcement, demonizes youth crime and raises prison sentences. Its major proponent, George Runner, is a crime warrior legislator whose last major initiative success was the noxious and ludicrous (but successful) sex offender blockbuster called Jessica's Law. The major ideological function of this law is to further invest gang crime with political meaning. Its hard to have a war on crime unless crime looks and feels like a threatening army. The real value of gangs to politicians is that as a stereotype gang members fit the need for an enemy army. The reality is that most "gang crime" is simply youth conflict whose origins have little directly to do with gangs but for which gang signs are a convenient explanation.

PROPOSITION 9: CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. VICTIMS'S RIGHTS. PAROLE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND STATUTE

This measure would help constitutionalize the citizen as crime victim identity (subject of chapter 3 of Governing through Crime). The only good news here is that the very existence of this initiative may be evidence that the end is near for governing through crime. Efforts to constitutionalize usually mark awareness that the political vitality of a movement is slipping. Like its sister, Proposition 6, 9 would provide an opportunity for those who have benefited from the war on crime to lock in their gains. The single most atrocious feature of this initiative, is the senselessly cruel provision that would set rehearings in parole consideration for lifers in California prisons from its current 1 year, to a new presumption of 14 years. For many lifers in prison this is a death sentence and its adoption may well be followed by a wave of despair inside our prisons where lifers often play a key role in socializing younger inmates.

Both 6 and 9 are being supported financially by the Henry Nicholas, an internet millionaire whose sister was murdered by her boy friend 25 years ago, and who is now facing serious criminal charges involving fraud, sex, and drugs (read the story by Bethany Mclean in the November issue of Vanity Fair, Dr. Nicholas and Mr. Hyde)

Detroit Journal: Does America Need another Black Man in Jail?

Yesterday Detroit's former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, began serving a four month sentence in the Wayne County jail. There is plenty of drama to the specter of the former leader of the city whose extroverted celebrity like life style was often a source of talk in the city (Read the NYT story by Nick Bunkley) now occupying Cell 143-4 of his home town's jail. Kilpatrick's romantic extramarital affair (detailed in a huge number of text messages), his efforts to cover it up by trying to get some police officers fired (sounds like Sarah Palin), and his brief shove with a police officer during one of his court proceedings (upgraded to "assaulting an officer" in his criminal case) were all tawdry and perhaps a bad example to the boys and girls of the once Motor City.

Still, does Detroit, does America need another Black man in jail? One who was a middle-school teacher, was twice elected mayor and helped lead a nightlife boom in the city's depressed downtown? Is he a danger to anyone living in Detroit? Is it so essential to send a harsh deterrent message to adulterers or those who would manipulate their work place power to cover up their mistakes?

I for one cannot understand what purpose of policy or justice is served by locking the man up at tax payers expense for four months. Nor can I imagine that Bill Clinton or any other white politician drawing time for the same conduct.

(By the way I don't favor sending an old White man like Ted Stevens to prison either, just take all his money and leave it at that!)

(photo credit: Paul Sancya/Associated Press)