Moskos in the Hood

Will Wilkinson and Peter Moskos have a conversation up on Bloggingheads discussing Moskos' book Cop in the Hood. Moskos is an Ivy Leaguer who spent two years as a Baltimore policeman (before The Wire came out) as a field study. The views Moskos gives basically agree with my a priori views about the drug problem in inner cities (and probably agree with his a prioris as well).

The big problem, of course, is that we have products (the various illegal drugs) which have a large customer base but are illegal. Short of the type of draconian tactics you see in Singapore, there will always be a market for these illegal drugs. Since selling drugs is heavily prosecuted, the market is completely ceded to criminals. The combination of the great amount of money and the culture than seems to exists amongst drug dealers leads to a lot of violence. This is a big problem in inner cities and I think it may be the biggest social problem in the United States. Moskos and I agree that the solution in to legalize drugs, which is politically unpalatable. So, we have the drug war which screws up our cities and also creates big problems abroad - like in Columbia and Afghanistan ...Of course, it may be politicaly impossible for those countries to consider legalization as well.

- Moskos has a blog for the book on Amazon.com which has some interesting posts.