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Entry: Our Brilliant Pundits Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/our_brilliant_pundits#26220 Post contents: To "Whatever": You say, "I do remember your arguing on these pages for locking away a certain part of the population (disproportionally of colour) for non-crimes (drug use, to wit) just to brighten up crime statistics." I say to you that if you think drug use is a non-crime, you should light up a crack pipe in front of your local police station. It is illegal, as in against the law, as in it's written in a book somewhere you can't do it and you will be arrested and convicted if you do so. How is such a thing a "noncrime?" And since law-breakers for drugs are endogenous with other law-breakers, a happy byproduct--a positive externality if you will-- of our harsh drug penalties is that other crimes are being reduced in the process because the easier-to-identity and easier-to-prosecute offenders are getting busted on the drug-possession part of their crime portfolio. It's true many are part of the black underclass, but so are many criminals. I don't really mind that lots of white offenders are going to jail, though; I imagine their rates of offending are much higher than the population in general. Sent at: 2008 09 07