The Prison Lobby Believes The War on Drugs Is a Failure

The private prison industry* and public sector prison guard unions tend to lobby for stricter drug laws and fight efforts to relax those drug laws. This is strong evidence that drug prohibition does not work, at least in the estimation of the prison lobby. Let me explain.

Supposedly drug prohibition prevents crime by penalizing drug use. Drug users behave irrationally and commit assault and property crimes, the thinking goes. Or they commit various property crimes to support their drug habits. Sure, if you're going to enforce drug laws you're going to have to put some people in prison. You don't have much of a "law" if you're not going to enforce it. But we get less crime overall, because we deter so much drug use. For the price of locking up a few dealers, we deter a lot of drug-fueled zombies from breaking windows, assaulting people, and neglecting their children. That's the rationale for drug prohibition in a nutshell.

The prison lobby doesn't buy it. If they did, they'd be eager to fill their beds with the drug-fueled maniacs that will follow after drug legalization. They would either lobby for or perhaps decline to oppose reforms that relax (repeal?) our drug laws. Maybe I'm wrong for some reason. Maybe the prison lobby doesn't have a strong analytical team and they are simply mistaken about the effect of relaxing drug laws (plausible). Or maybe drug offenders fill up prisons now, with the benefits of drug deterrence coming in the far-off future, such that a net present value calculation makes the short-term gain beneficial to the prison industry (far less plausible). Or maybe the prison lobby is genuinely lobbying in favor of the public interest (even less plausible; see footnote).

If you want to read something empirical on the deterrent effect of drug prohibition, I recommend Jeffrey Miron's Drug War Crimes or Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics by Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen. Both include time series data showing that drug use doesn't really budge in response to various policy tweaks, such as tightening or softening drug enforcement. If the prison lobby thinks that the effect of drug prohibition on actual drug use is so small as to be irrelevant, they are probably right. My guess is they either implicitly understand this or they did a little research and figured it out.

______________________________________________________

*Do read the Snopes piece. It appears that we don't know how much the private prison lobby is spending specifically to fight drug law reforms. A quote from an SEC filing was taken as advocacy, when in reality the quote was simply warning its shareholders that relaxing drug laws will hurt revenues. This actually more clearly makes my point than if they were simply lobbying for a law. They could lobby for strict drug laws but claim they privately held the public's best interests at heart. Instead they are saying flat out that relaxing drug laws could reduce their profits by making it harder to fill prison beds.

Here is the SEC filing, an annual report called the 10-K.

Our ability to secure new contracts to develop and manage correctional and detention facilities depends on many factors outside our control. Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. This possible growth depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates and sentencing patterns in various jurisdictions and acceptance of privatization. The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.

Emphasis mine. And later in the report it says:

Our inmate transportation subsidiary, TransCor, is subject to regulations promulgated by the Departments of Transportation and Justice. TransCor must also comply with the Interstate Transportation of Dangerous Criminals Act of 2000, which covers operational aspects of transporting prisoners, including, but not limited to, background checks and drug testing of employees; employee training; employee hours; staff-to-inmate ratios; prisoner restraints; communication with local law enforcement; and standards to help ensure the safety of prisoners during transport. We are subject to changes in such regulations, which could result in an increase in the cost of our transportation operations.

It is important to note that the report isn't advocating for or against any particular policy, just warning its shareholders about potential threats and costs. Let's not heap scorn upon them for telling it like it is. Still, it's interesting that they see drug testing of employees as a likely net cost. If the logic of drug prohibition is correct, wouldn't removing those drug-addled employees lower their costs? Apparently even cheap, private efforts to reduce the costs of drug use don't pay off. Expensive public efforts to eradicate drug use, even more so.