In every American city, there are crack houses. Addicts know where they are. That is why crack houses make money.
The police seem not to know where these crack houses are. That is why crack houses make money.
How is it that the crackheads know where the crack houses are, but the police do not?
If I were to teach a class on criminology, I would begin with this question.
The economist answers the question with this statement: "There are differences in the results of personal cost-benefit analyses."
The crackheads want a benefit: a brief high. For this, they are willing to bear a cost: money.
The police want a benefit: another day of life. For this, they are willing to bear a cost: pretended blindness.
The public never asks the question: "How is it that the crackheads know where the crack houses are, but the police do not?" This provides a convenient cover for the police. There are no negative sanctions applied by the public. This lowers the price of selective blindness. Economics teaches this: "When the price of something falls, more is demanded." Selective blindness spreads.
The people who live in the neighborhoods where crack houses are located do not bother to ask the question. They know the answer. They do not have much police protection. They are marginal. They know why. They have little political clout. They are dealing with the government.
The people who live in neighborhoods without crack houses do not ask the question, because they do not see the problem. The problem never occurs to them. "Out of sight, out of mind." They have police protection, or think they have. They are not politically marginal.
Yet these people really do face the problem. The local crack house is the public high school. It is a drug emporium. It is where the money is. But if they were to see this, parents would face a decision: whether or not to pull their children out. To pull them out would be very costly. So, the parents prefer not to see the problem. In this sense, they are like the police.
Do the police make lots of arrests on campus? No. What if these arrests were constant? What if the sons of upper-middle-class whites were constantly being arrested? What would be the political fallout of a war on drugs where the drugs really are? Not good for public school administrators. Not good for the police.
The police learn to see crime selectively: in terms of a cost-benefit analysis of the kinds of crime to notice and deal with, and the kinds of crime not to notice and not to deal with. It has to do with grease. The squeaky wheel gets greased. So do palms.
Around the West, the state is failing to respond effectively to crime. The justification for the state is its ability to deal with crime. If it fails here, it loses legitimacy. It ceases to gain voluntary cooperation from the public. The state can function only if people under its jurisdiction voluntarily comply. It does not possess sufficient resources to enforce the laws -- which increase daily -- if people resist.
The Western state is steadily losing legitimacy, because it cannot provide what the public wants from the state most of all: protection against violence.
Jacque Barzun died at the age of 104 in 2012. In his great book, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1900 to the Present (2000), he brought to bear 65 years of academic research on history and culture. It was his magnum opus. In the final chapter, "Demotic Life and Times," he made this observation. He made it as if he were an historian of the future, looking back on this era.
The main merit of the nation-state was that over its large territory violence had been reduced; nobles first and citizens later were subjected to one law uniformly recognized and applied. In the last few years of the era of nations, violence returned; crime was endemic in the West. Assault in the home, the office, and on city streets was commonplace and particularly vicious (p. 776).
Two facts characterize our era, he said: rising crime and the inevitable bankruptcy of the welfare state. These will combine to break up the modern nation-state. On this, Martin van Creveld agreed in 1999: The Rise and Decline of the State.
The local crack house is a representative institution of what is wrong with this social order. The despair of the crackheads, the blindness of the police, and the profits of the operators all point to a lost faith.
It will do no good to pass another law. Another law will simply add to the problem.
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