Conservatives and Law Enforcement

Conservatives and Law Enforcement
By Daniel G. Jennings
If we are to create a New Conservatism that addresses the issues facing modern America, conservatives must be prepared to reevaluate their positions on all aspects of our society. In particular conservatives must take a long hard look at law enforcement and determine if modern American law enforcement is a threat to traditional conservative values.
Like defense, law enforcement has long been a conservative sacred cow largely because it is a popular issue at election time. Conservatives believe law enforcement can do no wrong and vote to give the law enforcement establishment all the money it wants, whether the expenditures are justified or not.
Just as mindless defense spending may actually undermine military preparedness and national security so mindless law enforcement spending may actually undermine effective police work. Often times the large sums allocated to law enforcement go not to the cop on the beat but to law enforcement bureaucracies. Instead of hiring more police officers, improving police training or increasing resources for community policing law enforcement agencies often spend their funds on fancy equipment and weaponry that’s of little value in day to day police work. Fancy crime labs, automatic rifles for the SWAT team and tanks for the riot squad look good in demonstrations for the press but don’t help stop street crime.
Nor is the situation on the federal level much better, as Col. Bill Lind of the Free Congress Foundation has pointed out money from the federal government’s effective COPS community policing program has been redirected to bureaucracy namely Homeland Security. COPS has been effective in helping local police clean up communities, the Department of Homeland Security has accomplished little beyond building up a massive bureaucracy.
Beyond the expenditures on law enforcement there is the relationship between law enforcement and constitutional rights. Conservatives like to talk about constitutional rights and the rule of law but too often the message that gets out is that conservatives only want constitutional rights and the rule of law for white middle class people. Conservatives harp on big government threats to rights that affect the middle and upper classes such as business licensing but ignore what amounts to an organized war on the rights of poor people in the name of law enforcement.
Take the war on drugs, one drug war tactic is to seize the property of people convicted of drug crimes. This generates money for law enforcement agencies that seize the property but there’s no evidence it actually prevents or deters drug dealing. After all drug dealing criminals will simply sell more dope to buy more property or put the property in somebody else’s name. Average people who get caught up in drug crime may loose property they’ve worked hard for. Seizures are morally questionable and may violate the spirit of the constitution yet conservatives have ignored the issue.
Nor have conservatives, many of whom supposedly believe in the right to bear arms, complained loudly about gun crime laws. Under some of these laws people can be given hard prison time for committing minor crimes if police find they possess a gun while committing the crime. For example a person could theoretically get a long prison sentence if police found both an ounce of marijuana and a hunting rifle in their vehicle. Does the Second Amendment apply only to white people who abide the law or does it apply to all citizens?
What about a poor man who has a criminal record but has gone straight and now has a family to protect. He may live in a bad neighborhood and feel the need to keep a gun to protect his family. Yet he might not be able to keep that gun because of a stupid mistake he made twenty years ago.
What about three strikes your out laws? Under these laws people often get long prison sentences for committing minor and harmless crimes like swiping a piece of pizza because they have three felony convictions on their record. These people often get longer sentences than violent criminals like rapists and child molesters who are a real threat to the community. Shouldn’t conservatives stand up for common sense?
This leads us to the prison system, America now maintains one of the world’s largest and most expensive penal systems. Several million people are locked up, some of them are violent and dangerous criminals but many are just poor people in prison for the crime of not having a decent lawyer. Unfortunately, the purpose of this prison system increasingly seems to be to guarantee jobs to people who work at prisons and profits to corporations that build and operate prisons rather than the incarceration or reformation of criminals.
Vast amounts of tax money are now spent on prisons even though crime rates are falling. Officials are constantly demanding more tax money for more prisons. In many cases, the politicians promoting prison construction blatantly say that the real goal is the creation of good paying government jobs with good benefits for people who are too lazy to find work in the private sector.
This new prison system is the antithesis of traditional conservative values, the prisons are big government a massive bureaucracy run for the selfish interest of those who profit from them not the public good. They are supported by tax money and hurt the economy in two ways, first by taking money in the form of taxes and secondly by locking large numbers of people who might become productive citizens if given the chance.
Many prisoners could probably be reformed or at least scared into law abiding citizens if we tried. Parole and probation systems might do this, especially if there are enough parole officers to make sure young punks are working and going to school rather than getting into trouble. Many younger prisoners might benefit from the discipline and education provided by military service, the military has a hard time getting recruits. Maybe it’s time to give young offenders the opportunity to avoid prison by serving their country in uniform.
Perhaps it’s time for conservatives to come out against mandatory sentencing and private prisons. A moratorium on prison building might be in order, as would sensible plans to reduce the number of prisons.
In addition to prisons there is the so called War on Drugs, it’s been going on for over thirty years yet the drug problem doesn’t seem to be any better. Virtually any American can get any illegal drug he or she wants, provided he or she has a few bucks and is willing to ask around. Yet we spend billions of dollars on drug interdiction and trample the rights of average citizens to stop drugs. Perhaps it’s time to end the war on drugs or change tactics. Education efforts like Nancy Reagan’s just say for example.
The Drug War even effects our foreign policy and national security. Military and intelligence resources that could be used to fight terrorism are diverted to fight drug trafficking. American drug interdiction and eradication efforts antagonize average people in foreign countries encouraging popular support for drug dealing gangsters. The drug trade itself gives terrorists, such as Marxist thugs in Latin America, a ready source of cash for weapons and mercenaries to support their cause. Some Islamic terror groups also profit from the drug war. The secret networks set up by drug smugglers may one day provide terrorists with the means to bring operatives and weapons into the United States.
It’s time Conservatives had a serious discussion about the War on Drugs and decided whether it’s worth the effort or not. Perhaps other tactics might be in order, for example we might be able to reduce drug dependence by cutting welfare payments. A great many drug addicts are on welfare, that is they use money taken from taxpayers to pay for their drugs. Drug dealers often target communities with lots of poor people on welfare such as Indian Reservations. In other words the same government that is fighting drug gangs is financing them by handing out welfare money to the poor.
Even the question of legalization must be raised. After all is it ethical for our government to try and ban some categories of addictive drugs such as cocaine and heroin while profiting from taxes on addictive substances such as alcohol and tobacco? Alcohol and tobacco hurt and kill many more people than illegal drugs do. Or for that matter ethical to throw some people into prison for selling methamphetamine, while allowing doctors to prescribe a similar drug, Riddilin to school children?
There are I am sure many other questions that conservatives should be asking about law enforcement? The federalization of law enforcement inherent in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs could it lead to the rise of a national police force, an American KGB? Or the militarization of law enforcement, increasingly our police are looking and in some instances acting like storm troopers. In some cases, the police in our cities operate like an occupying army rather than cops. None of these developments are healthy and they represent betrayals of traditional American values.
Conservatives have to ask themselves: how do we protect our communities and citizens without betraying our values and trampling our rights? It’s a big question and a difficult one. After all vast expenditures for law enforcement bureaucracies and prisons are politically popular. So are the War on Drugs, mandatory sentencing and gun laws. Can conservatives overcome political expediency to ask these questions?
That is the challenge facing the New Conservatism how do we protect our communities and our values at the same time?