War on Drugs

For a culmination of years, scholars have argued the use of policing and other security strategies as risk management strategies to solve complex social criminality. Criminality is such a complex subject that governance have turned to producing risk management strategies that do not fix the problem but provide a way for “risk” to be managed. Risk management strategies are composed of two key components as followed: (1) the political spectacle (of methods such as policing), and (2) the construction and targeting of a suspect class. Risk is defined as a situation involving exposure to danger. In order to decrease of risk institutions of governance create agents or units of “risk” that can be managed because it is much harder to get rid of agents of social “risk.” By creating something that can be managed they are ultimately controlling the instance of “risk.”

The political spectacle is the politicized and publicized targeted policing in media and validated statistical evidence available to the public. The construction of the suspect class is also the criminalization of the targeted population. The “war on drugs” is a risk management strategy that, rather than stopping the drug trade, overwhelmingly incarcerates and criminalizes African Americans. As a risk management strategy the “war on drugs” has been a primary agent in politicizing the targeted policing of African Americans and contributed to the construction of African Americans as a suspect class.

[...] 41, No. 3 (Sep., 2008), pp. 221-243. 2. Mark Harrison Moore. Problem-Solving and Community Policing. Crime and Justice. Vol. 15, Modern Policing (1992), pp. 99-158. Published by: The University of Chicago Press 3. John J. Dilulio Jr.. The Next War on Drugs: Targeting the Inner Cities. The Brookings Review. Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1993), pp. 28-33. Published by: The Brookings Institution 4. Mark H. Moore. Drugs, the Criminal Law, and the Administration of Justice The Milbank Quarterly. Vol. 69, No. [...]

[...] amongst the public. It was not until the 1970s and 80s that law enforcement began to target drug dealers solely, as opposed to traffickers and pushers in the 60s. The primary reason for this shift was the belief that these new efforts would decrease the supply and increase the price of these drugs (Moore 1991; p. 544). These drug wars that were combatted by law enforcement began in the Nixon administration and was later followed by Reagan then Bush. More and more money is being spent on law enforcement to control the supply of drugs in the U.S. [...]

[...] prison system today. The “war on drugs” is a risk management strategy that created a political spectacle of the correlation between drugs and crimes, as well as constructed African Americans as the suspect class through targeted police initiatives. Bibliography Alexander, Michelle. “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline and Transformation in Postwar American History,” Journal of American History. (December, 2010). Wacquant, Loic. "From slavery to Mass Incarceration." "Slavery", International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. (New York, 1968). Omi, Micahel, and Howard Winant. [...]