Unintended consequences

One of the great things about the HBO show The Wire is the way it depicts the unintended consequences of policing on crime. Series 4 (my personal favourite) charts the rise of an upstart drugs dealer named Marlo Stanfield, who steps in to replace the territory vacated by the collapse of the Barksdale Crew, who's leader, Avon Barksdale, had been put behind bars at the end of Series 3. To the horror of the Baltimore Police, Marlo's reign turns out to be even more violent and anarchic than his predecessor's with murders carried out for increasingly trivial reasons, rather than as a last resort.

The paradox at the heart of this tale - that 'success' in policing can sometimes end up making things worse - can be seen in evidence today.

To take just one example: US-backed victories against drug cartels in Peru and Bolivia in the late 1990s appear to have driven the narcotraficantes closer to the US border, into Mexico, which has, over the last decade became one of the world's biggest 'hubs' for organised criminality. Meanwhile, the UN's most recent World Drugs Report suggests a key reason for the dramatic increase in the Mexican homicide rate is that demand for cocaine has begun to fall in the US, meaning that the narcotraficantes have been left fighting over a shrinking market. In fact the plight of Mexico could serve as a perfect case study in the law of unintended consequences.

None of which is meant to imply that I think we should give up trying to control the illicit flows of drugs. I do not subscribe to the view that ending prohibition would necessarily reduce drug harms. For example, there is strong evidence that if currently illegal substances were made legal, their popularity would increase, which would in turn increase the levels of morbidity and mortality associated with drug-taking. And it has always struck me as odd that the issue of drug control is uniquely subject to calls that the struggle should be abandoned, when, despite equally mixed results in international interventions, no one advocates accepting poverty as inevitable, for example.

But we should acknowledge rather than ignore or deny the existence of such unintended consequences, particularly when so many lives are at stake.