Drug Laws Aid and Abet Crime Wave : Crime bills won’t work until drugs are legalized and the welfare system is reformed.

Congress is about to spend more than $22 billion on a crime bill that addresses symptoms more than causes. The money is mainly for more police and prisons and might do some good if it produces more convictions and longer sentences. Some repeat offenders will be curtailed by an amendment to the bill that imposes a mandatory life sentence after three federal convictions for violent crimes.

Part of the crime problem stems from punishments being scant and far between. Recently, the Washington Post examined crime and punishment in the District of Columbia and came to the same conclusion as the National Rifle Assn.: Crime pays.

If you kill someone in D.C., you have a 75% chance of getting away with it. Even if a murderer ends up convicted, his odds for a stiff sentence are low. The Post found that only 82 first-degree murder convictions could be squeezed out of 1,286 killings. The District of Columbia, of course, has no death penalty.

The explosion of crime from lack of punishment feeds on itself. Homicide detectives are overwhelmed by the number of murders and courts are clogged. Incomplete investigations, missing and intimidated witnesses, plea bargains and early parole have added to the crime rate by reducing the certainty and severity of punishment. As crime mounts, the overcrowded criminal-justice system’s ability to cope further declines, making criminal activity an ever more attractive option to schooling and job discipline.

What strategies can be employed to end the carnage? Here reason fails. Liberals blame guns, hopeless poverty and unloved children. Invariably, the solution comes down to more gun control.

A gun ban, however, is counterproductive. It creates profitable criminal activity for gunrunners, and it disarms law-abiding citizens, leaving them defenseless. Disarming citizens would lead to an explosion in the crime rate. Not only are attempted crimes prevented; when the would-be victim is armed, many crimes are not even attempted.

The District of Columbia’s gun ban has added to the crime rate by giving criminals control over gun sales. The failure of the local ban has spawned arguments for a federal gun ban. That would only mean that the guns would come in with the drugs from Colombia and Mexico.

To be effective, gun and bullet bans would have to impose far more Draconian punishments than apply to murder and drug possession. We shouldn’t forget that murder and drugs are already banned, and both proliferate.

The $22-billion crime bill will be another expensive failure because it stems from a refusal to recognize the obvious: The laws against drugs have created a profitable way of life for people who don’t flinch at violence. In trying to protect society from drug use, we have created an alternative career pattern for people averse to formal education and regular working hours.

In the District of Columbia, the murder rate is the product of black males killing each other over the fantastic profits of the illegal drug trade. Being illegal, drug profits cannot be protected by contractual rights. Instead, the profits are distributed by violence, and they go to the most ruthless. The same situation prevailed when alcohol was illegal. Ban makeup, cigarettes, pantyhose, word processors or guns, and a similar murder rate will be associated with the profits from their illegal distribution.

Conservatives oppose drug legalization because it implies society’s approval of destructive behavior. But unless we are prepared to execute people for selling and using drugs, the laws against drugs will continue to be ineffectual. Indeed, the frustration from losing the war against drugs has produced far more dangerous results than the drug culture itself. We now have asset-forfeiture laws that mainly victimize the innocent, and dangerous assaults on our Second Amendment rights.

More prisons and more police are not the answer, because the welfare system produces an endless supply of fatherless sons to take the place of each drug dealer who is put away. In 1991, 68% of black births were to unmarried women, up from 37% in 1970. Fewer and fewer young blacks ever experience a father or see a work ethic. For people cast aside by a stupid social policy, brigandage has become a way of life.

No progress will be made against the crime rate--regardless of the number of new crime bills--until drugs are legalized and the welfare system is reformed. Gun-control measures in no way affect the root causes of the problem and will intensify crime by creating a profitable new product for illegal trade.