Read more
This book reveals the disturbing truth about how the escalation of the War on Drugs over the past 30 years has eroded the human and property rights of Americans-while doing little to stop drug trafficking or use.Unique in its perspective, this eye-opening book looks at the drug war as a rights issue and concludes that Americans' civil liberties are clearly being violated. The volume proceeds from two premises: that over the past 30 years, America's War on Drugs has done more harm than good; and that if the United States is going to reform the criminal justice system, the public must understand that this "war" is empowered by the profits it provides to law enforcement and other groups.
A central factor causing the upsurge in the drug war, the author explains, is the fact that laws were passed in the 1980s that allowed law enforcement to profit from seizing property based on scanty evidence and without criminal charges. His meticulous research has revealed that this "policing for profit" is responsible for a variety of assaults on civil liberties, including mass incarceration, SWAT teams, and random drug sweeps. A second factor that infects every aspect of the War on Drugs is racism-the widespread stereotyping of drug traffickers as African Americans and Latinos. These issues and more are explored in this book that lays bare what the media largely ignores.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Policing for Profit1 The License to Steal
2 Traffic Stops
3 Houses Arrested
4 SWAT Raids
5 Random Drug Sweeps
Part II Racial Injustice6 Shutting the Courthouse Door
7 Racial Disparities
8 Police Bias in Seattle
9 Police Bias in New York
Part III Covert Operators10 Criminal Informants
11 Undercover Police
Part IV Citizenship Barriers12 The Criminal Population
13 Invisible Punishments
Part V Drug Testing14 Drug Testing Students
15 Employee Drug Testing
Part VI Is the War Ending?16 Good News!
17 The War's Beneficiaries
Part VII Summary and Conclusions18 Inevitable Damages
19 Drug War Benefits?
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
ARTHUR BENAVIE is Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill./e His specialty is macroeconomics, a field which includes the topic of government deficits. He has published numerous journal articles and two books for economists.
