October 21, 1999

by Peter J.M. Orvetti

Crime News: Less Violent Crime, Says FBI…
…But Marijuana Arrests Still High
The Education Election?

Crime News: Less Violent Crime…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a decline in serious crimes for the seventh straight year, AP reports. During 1998, all violent crimes decreased in number and rate, and the more common property crimes such as burglary and auto theft also declined markedly. The overall violent crime rate dropped 7.3 percent to its lowest figure since 1985. Attorney General Janet Reno credited the decline to "more police officers on the street, greater partnerships between law enforcement agencies, continued efforts to keep guns away from criminals, and a balanced approach that includes prevention, intervention, punishment and supervision."

Cato Institute Chairman William A. Niskanen's 1994 Cato Policy Analysis "Crime, Police, and Root Causes" painted a very different picture, however: "This paper presents a statistical analysis of the relations between crime rates and the level of public safety resources, controlling for the major conditions that affect each variable. Major findings include the following. Crime in the United States is much higher than that reported to police but has probably not increased over the past 20 years. An increase in police appears to have no significant effect on the actual rate of violent crime and a roughly proportionate negative effect on the actual rate of property crime. An increase in corrections employees appears to have no significant effect on the violent crime rate and a small positive effect on the property crime rate. Crime rates are strongly affected by economic conditions. For example, an increase in per capita income appears to reduce both violent and property crime rates by a roughly proportionate amount. Crime rates are also affected by demographic and cultural conditions. For example, the violent crime rate increases with the share of births to single mothers. The demand for police and corrections employees is a negative function of the average salary of public employees, a positive function of per capita income and federal aid, and a positive function of the crime rates. The major policy implication of this study is that, because we have so little knowledge of how to reduce crime, we should decentralize decisions on crime prevention and control."

…But Marijuana Arrests Still High

And there's more on the downside of crime prevention. The number of marijuana arrests in 1998 remained near the 1997 record high and surpassed those for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault combined, according to the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project. Citing the FBI report, the group said there were 682,885 marijuana-related arrests in 1998, just barely down from the record 695,200 in 1997. "This is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources," said Chuck Thomas, the group's spokesman for the group. The Marijuana Policy Project lobbies lawmakers to legalize medical marijuana prescribed by doctors for illnesses that cause pain or discomfort associated with the treatment of cancer or AIDS.

The Cato Institute hosted the conference Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century" in Washington on October 5. The event is available in RealVideo format. The conference gained national attention because of New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson's well-publicized call for drug legalization at the event. Johnson's speech is also available in RealVideo.

Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Boaz testified before Congress on drug legalization, criminalization, and harm reduction in June: "Perhaps no area more clearly demonstrates the bad consequences of not following such rules than drug prohibition. The long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs has given us unprecedented crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children. In the 1920s Congress experimented with the prohibition of alcohol. On February 20, 1933, a new Congress acknowledged the failure of alcohol Prohibition and sent the Twenty-First Amendment to the states. Congress recognized that Prohibition had failed to stop drinking and had increased prison populations and violent crime. By the end of 1933, national Prohibition was history, though in accordance with our federal system many states continued to outlaw or severely restrict the sale of liquor.

"Today Congress confronts a similarly failed prohibition policy. Futile efforts to enforce prohibition have been pursued even more vigorously in the 1980s and 1990s than they were in the 1920s. Total federal expenditures for the first 10 years of Prohibition amounted to $88 million--about $733 million in 1993 dollars. Drug enforcement cost about $22 billion in the Reagan years and another $45 billion in the four years of the Bush administration. The federal government spent $16 billion on drug control programs in FY 1998 and has approved a budget of $17.9 billion for FY 1999. The Office of National Drug Control Policy reported in April 1999 that state and local governments spent an additional $15.9 billion in FY 1991, an increase of 13 percent over 1990, and there is every reason to believe that state and local expenditures have risen throughout the 1990s. Those mind-boggling amounts have had some effect. Total drug arrests are now more than 1.5 million a year. There are about 400,000 drug offenders in jails and prison now, and over 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions. Drug offenders constituted 59.6 percent of all federal prisoners in 1996, up from 52.6 percent in 1990. (Those in federal prison for violent offenses fell from 18 percent to 12.4 percent of the total, while property offenders fell from 14 percent to 8.4 percent.)"

The Education Election?

School choice has hit the mainstream of presidential politics. Though both Democratic candidates oppose voucher programs, AP reports that all of the major Republican contenders are talking about reform in Iowa. Steve Forbes has offered a comprehensive plan that would convert the federal government's $7.7 billion Title 1 reading program for low-income students into a voucher program for parents looking to move their kids out of troubled schools. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the current frontrunner, offers a hybrid plan on a federal level. Bush would measure local Title 1 programs against state-by-state standards to identify which schools are falling behind. After three years, if a below-par school is making no progress, Bush would turn its Title 1 funds over to parents.

But a fundamental matter is largely being ignored: Education is not the concern of the president, nor of the federal government, according to the Cato Handbook for Congress (pdf): "No one questions the importance of education in a complex modern society. Education is the process by which we impart moral values to our children, make them part of our particular culture, develop their ability to think, and give them specific kinds of information that they will need to be productive adults, good citizens, and civilized human beings. Today there is great concern about the quality of American education. Every month brings another study on how poorly American students fare in international competition. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study, released in November 1996, found that U.S. eighth-graders scored below the average of students from 40 nations on math and just above average on science. U.S. students scored lower than students from Singapore, Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

"But neither the importance of education nor its poor quality means that education is an important function of the federal government. In fact, education is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States, and for good reason. The Founders wanted most aspects of life managed by those who were closest to them, either by state or local government or by families, businesses, and other elements of civil society. Certainly they saw no role for the federal government in education. Once upon a time, not so very many years ago, Congress understood that. The History of the Formation of the Union under the Constitution, published by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission, under the direction of the president, the vice president, and the Speaker of the House in 1943, contained this exchange in a section titled 'Questions and Answers Pertaining to the Constitution':

Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education?

A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states."

School choice is a step in the right direction, however, and much more on the topic can be found in the book School Choice: Why You Need It--How You Get It by David Harmer. In the book, Harmer explains why the public schools no longer work, why they resist reform, and why choice is the reform that will work. He also gives us the inside story of California's pioneering 1993 Parental Choice in Education initiative and the education establishment's successful $16 million campaign to defeat it. Harmer explains how other states can adapt the initiative to their needs and what lessons can be learned from its defeat. The Cato Briefing Paper "What Would a School Voucher Buy? The Real Cost of Private Schools" and the Cato Policy Analysis "Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate" offer more on the voucher aspect of the education issue.