International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 153

International Journal on Criminology
by Latinos, who together make up the bulk of the incarcerated population. 109
Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer descended from slaves from Delaware, was recently
in France to promote his latest book, and in an interview, he explained that ...
We have been governed by policies that are based on fear and resentment
for decades. Crime is a subject that can very easily be
exploited politically because none of us wants, of course, to be the
victim of it, and the existence of criminality outrages us. During
the Nixon years, America declared an improperly directed “war on
drugs” that led us to send hundreds of thousands of people to prison.
Instead of taking the view that addiction to and dependence
on drugs were public health problems, we have considered them
strictly criminal problems. We have turned to the criminal justice
system to respond to drug addiction. The result: whereas in the early
1970s we had three hundred thousand people behind bars, with
a rate of incarceration that remained relatively stable throughout
the early twentieth century, today we have 2.3 million, to which we
must add seven million people on probation or parole. This “war
on drugs,” combined with a political tendency followed by the two
major parties, Republicans and Democrats alike, of being merciless
toward any delinquency and any criminality, has led to the establishment
of mandatory minimum and extreme sentences, and this
has made us quickly become one of the most punitive societies on
the planet. 110
Ronald Reagan, who as a candidate came out in favor of continuing the war
on drugs, strengthened this policy once more after Jimmy Carter had aimed to decriminalize
cannabis, a position that probably cost him reelection. Reagan wanted
to appear firm and resolved, and so he had to put an end to the drug question.
Under him, a period of plenty in terms of the financing of this war began.
In parallel, in Mexico at the time, a criminal dynamic was emerging, with
extraordinarily well-organized groups laying the foundations of what has become
a narcostate. The war on drugs that the United States has waged inside and outside
its borders has had the concrete result of creating on its southern border a group
of criminal organizations that since the beginning have focused their activities on
drug trafficking. These organizations are known as cartels nowadays because of
their organizational sophistication. They have grown, multiplied, and diversified,
to the point that, ultimately, they now compete with the Mexican state for control
of the country.
109 Nils Christie, Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style (London: Routledge, 2000).
110 https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/011017/etats-unis-pourquoi-lindustrie-de-laprison-vise-les-pauvres-et-les-noirs.
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