Drug-related crime

This trend was driven in part by an expansion in the rights of people accused of crimesБЂ”a long overdue expansion, some would argue. (Others would argue that the expansion went too far.) At the same time, politicians were growing increasingly softer on crimeБЂ”БЂњfor fear of sounding racist,БЂ«as the economist Gary Becker has written, БЂњsince African-Americans and Hispanics commit a disproportionate share of felonies.БЂ«So if you were the kind of person who might want to commit a crime, the incentives were lining up in your favor: a slimmer likelihood of being convicted and, if convicted, a shorter prison term. Because criminals respond to incentives as readily as anyone, the result was a surge in crime. It took some time, and a great deal of political turmoil, but these incentives were eventually curtailed. Criminals who would have previously been set freeБЂ”for drug-related offenses and parole revocation in particularБЂ”were instead locked up. Between 1980 and 2000, there was a fifteenfold increase in the number of people sent to prison on drug charges ...»