Summaries of Important Research
Edited By Iain Murray

Criminals Take Drugs

Jennifer Karberg and Doris James, “Substance Dependence, Abuse and Treatment of Jail Inmates, 2002,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2005 (ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs)

 

Over two thirds of local jail inmates are alcohol or drug abusers, and fully 40 percent are addicted to one or both substances. Jail inmates who are substance abusers are also more likely to have a prior criminal record, and to have been homeless in the year before their offense. Two thirds of abusers had participated in some form of treatment program, half while under correctional supervision, without success. And female inmates were even more likely to be dependent than males, by 52 percent to 44 percent.

 

Drug use motivates a lot of property crime. Property offenders outnumber violent criminals as substance abusers by a margin of 75 percent to 66 percent.

 

And drugs are more debilitating than alcohol. While 23 percent of inmates were dependent on alcohol, and 36 percent on drugs, drug abuse was more likely to lead to failure to fulfill “major role obligations” (work, school, and care for children). Drugs also bring more legal trouble and recurrent social and interpersonal problems than alcohol.

 

White inmates (55 percent) were more likely than black inmates (40 percent) or Hispanic inmates (36 percent) to be ensnarled with drugs or alcohol. And the age group where substance abuse was worst was 25 to 44 years old.

 

Substance abuse among criminals has declined somewhat over time. Since 1996, alcohol use at the time of the offense has fallen from 40 percent to 33 percent. Drug use at the time of the offense dropped from 35 to 29 percent in that same period, although the proportion of inmates reporting regular drug use rose 5 percentage points to
69 percent.

 

Marijuana and crack cocaine remain the drugs most commonly used by individuals who end up in jail—at 59 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Marijuana use is up 5 percent from 1996, but abuse of all other drugs remained steady.

 

Europe Divides U.K., U.S.

Richard North, “The Wrong Side of the Hill: The Secret Realignment of U.K. Defense Policy with the E.U.,” Centre for Policy Studies, October 2005 (cps.org.uk)

 

While moves to unify Europe politically have eased the transfer of goods and services across borders, it’s wreaking havoc on the ability of British and American militaries to cooperate in the field. Analyst Richard North believes that Britain’s new military relationship with the E.U. “will make it increasingly hard for the U.K. either to fight independently or to cooperate militarily with the U.S. The ‘special relationship,’ which has been the cornerstone of British defense policy from the time of the Second World War, will be at an end.”

 

The British public, he argues, has been kept in the dark about this. The current government insists that the new military relationship with the E.U. does not prejudice continued participation in NATO. But there is reason to doubt this.

 

North says the key problem is procurement policy in an era of  electronic warfare. Technical incompatibilities make it more and more difficult for forces working under different systems to fight alongside one other. Yet Britain’s Ministry of Defense is turning its back on joint defense projects with the U.S in order to purchase systems supplied or developed by firms in France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden.

 

The E.U., for instance, is developing an alternative to the GPS/Navstar satellite system on which NATO currently depends. From there, North writes, “almost every aspect of Britain’s future defense planning would rely on equipment supplied or being developed by her E.U. partners.”

 

Other joint U.K.-U.S. systems being rejected include supply trucks, reconnaissance vehicles, howitzers, radar systems, unmanned aircraft, strike aircraft, aircraft carriers, and even small arms. “The one consistent pattern in recent procurement policy has been that, wherever possible, U.S. firms are now being excluded, even where this means excluding British firms associated with them.”

 

This separates the U.K. and U.S. militaries. And North says it is also yielding inferior or more costly equipment, at a total additional expense of $25 billion.

 

And “the situation is compounded by the E.U.’s formal cooperation with China . . . .  Because of potential technology leakage from the E.U. to China, the U.S. is increasingly reluctant to share its technology with Britain. The problems of U.K.-U.S. cooperation are therefore being exacerbated further.”

 

In a foreword to the paper, Major General Julian Thompson, commander of British Land Forces in the Falklands War, comments, “More worrying is the effect that de-coupling from U.S. technology will have on the effectiveness of the U.K.’s armed forces in the increasingly net-centric age that lies ahead . . . . What are the Service Chiefs doing about such a disgraceful state of affairs?”

 

 

Taxing Family Life

Rebecca O’Neill, “Fiscal Policy and the Family: How the Family Fares in France, Germany and the U.K.,” Civitas, August 2005 (civitas.org.uk)

 

It’s conventional wisdom among Europeans that tax policy should promote equality between rich and poor citizens. In this report, economist Rebecca O’Neill crunches the numbers to see how taxes and benefits combine to affect a number of different family types in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

 

O’Neill finds very different outcomes, reflecting differing assumptions behind the three countries’ policies. France strongly encourages childbirth. Germany emphasizes the importance of marriage. The United Kingdom “has striven to be explicitly neutral in terms of family policy, and to focus on reducing child poverty by means of income transfers.” Single parenthood, therefore, is discouraged in France and Germany, but not in Britain.

 

The U.K.’s system of tax credits encourages families to split, in several perverse ways: In minimum-wage households, a child will experience a higher standard of living if he resides with just one parent instead of both. Among the unemployed, British mothers experience a substantial increase in their standard of living after breaking up with their partner.

 

In France and Germany, both taxes and welfare payments are much higher than in Britain. But benefits are distributed more evenly across the social spectrum, and compared to the U.K. there is a much stronger correlation between how much you paid in and how much you get back. “Many in the U.K. regard welfare as a form of enforced charity payable to those who have not contributed their fair share,” concludes O’Neill.

 

 

Cast Away the Lost

Doug Bandow, “LOST at Sea: Don’t Resurrect the Law of the Sea Treaty,” Policy Analysis, Cato Institute, October 13, 2005 (cato.org)

 

After rejecting it under President Reagan in 1982, the United States has steadfastly refused to become a party to the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). Advocates of the pact—which seeks to regulate navigation rights on the sea surface and mineral rights on the seabed—insisted that American rejection would bring international chaos. Doug Bandow explains that nothing of the kind happened, and that there is no reason to bind the U.S. to this flawed document today.

 

President Clinton signed the treaty in 1994, but failed to get it either ratified or rejected by the Senate. The Bush administration is now pushing for ratification. Bandow says that would be a mistake, that the treaty is still “collectivist in nature and inimical to U.S. interests.” He points to Section XI, covering seabed mining, which appears designed to discourage such exploration forever, even when it could provide huge benefits. Moreover, uses would be administered through a U.N. agency, the International Seabed Authority, likely to be as unfriendly to America, capitalism, and reason as other such U.N. bureaucracies.

 

Supporters argue that ratifying LOST would aid naval actions against terrorism. Bandow disagrees, saying that protections for naval transit rights and other benefits “would be moderate at best,” and that “provisions such as those covering technology transfers could put America’s national security at risk.” Bandow urges the Senate to reject the treaty.

 

 

Cold Water on Storm Theories

R. A. Pielke, et al., “Hurricanes and Global Warming,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, December 2005 (sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus)

 

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, media commentators have pushed the notion that global warming is to blame for this year’s active storm season. But a study by five leading hurricane researchers concludes that there is no discernible trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. They examined both the scientific characteristics of hurricanes and their human impact in reaching their conclusion. Scientists have no evidence that future storms will be noticeably larger than in the past, that storms will be more damaging, or that significantly increased destruction is on the horizon after population and property growth are factored out. Barring such evidence, the authors say, “The significance of any connection of human-induced climate change to hurricane impacts necessarily has been and will continue to be exceedingly small.”