You're absolutely right. That line on our "crime prevention" page is a little foolish. The page should also probably be renamed to "Criminal Justice" or simply "Justice".

Aside from the violence and property crime committed at the hand of the State, crime is inextricably linked to poverty. As they say "a hungry man will not be hungry for long". Mental illness (including addiction) is another factor that contributes to criminality. There are also higher rates of mental illness among the poor and homeless.  These and other factors intermingle in complex ways to generate the majority of what we traditionally think of as criminality. To say that it's all a product of personal choice is over-simplistic and pollyannish.  

This does not, however, necessitate government intervention. In fact, many--if not most--of the supposed solutions the government has introduced generate more problems, or at least exacerbate the existing ones. Private not-for-profits can address many these issues. And the very act of ending the drug prohibition, and repealing victimless crime laws would have an enormous effect.

Take gang violence for example. Gangs exist, in large part due to the drug prohibition. As Warren buffet says "it's god to learn from your own mistakes, but it's preferable to learn from the mistakes of others." Can Canada learn from American experience where guns, gangs, and drugs are concerned? That depends on political decisions at the highest levels, and the indicators are not promising.

Gangs are so difficult to eliminate because we cannot completely eliminate the circumstances--including the opportunity for fast money--that calls them into being and sustains them. This is particularly true of inner-city street gangs. The possibility and social dislocation are the catalysts and drug prohibition is the fuel. Defenders of prohibition claim that, were Canada to end drug prohibition, gangs would migrate to other activities. Actually, gangs already have multiple sources of illicit income--it's just that nothing else comes close to the profits made from drug dealing under prohibition. Cracking down suppliers eliminates only the gang members stupid or careless enough to get caught and provokes a lethal contest over the remaining market share. It is a form of natural selection--the surviving drug traffickers have proven themselves more deadly, more flexible, and more adept at evading police. So, we have gangs controlling drug markets with violence and turning neighbourhoods into "no go" zones. What is it be done?

The federal government has a one-size-fits-all solution: "get tough." That sounds like what our American neighbours have been doing since the early 1970's. What can we learn from their experience?

A systematic review by the Urban Health Research Initiative at UBC recently concluded that "the existing scientific evidence strongly suggests that drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates and that increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting drug distribution networks may increase levels of drug-related violence." That conclusion is based on a review of studies conducted mostly in the US. The lesson is clear: when police go to war with traffickers, traffickers go to war with each other, and citizens get caught in the crossfire. Why might this be true? Because drug markets operate like markets for any other commodity. When one large market actor is removed, others attempt to fill the vacuum. What is different about the drug market, however, is the context of criminal prohibition. Market participants shoot it out in the streets rather than in the courts. Prohibition, reenshrined in Canada's National Anti-Drug Strateg, guarantees the high profits from drug trafficking.

Bottom line, drug prohibition creates and sustains criminal gangs, just as alcohol prohibition created and sustained Al Capone, Bugsy Morgan and lucky Luciano.

Drug prohibition is currently tearing apart northern Mexico, fuelling a civil war between traffickers and the Mexican army. Drug prohibition finances the killing of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and gang violence in Vancouver. The bodies are piling up, but no one is learning.

So, can Canadians learn? The evidence is not encouraging. Like generals from WWI, the government claims that all that is needed is more of the same, only harder and tougher. The federal government's agenda promises "truth in sentencing" and "serious time for serious crime" but fails to acknowledge that none of these strategies, or any combination of "get tough" approaches, worked in the US. Nor can any degree of toughness repel the iron law of supply and demand that drives the drug trade under conditions of prohibition. Drug markets restabilize after temporary spasms of dealer-on-dealer violence and business proceeds as usual.

Today, across North America, prices for street drugs continue to fall as accessibility and purity of product continues to rise. It is precisely the opposite of what proponents of prohibition have promised since Nixon declared his "war on drugs" in the early 1970s. Drugs are everywhere and so are the gangs that provide them.

So, prohibition is yet another government initiative that achieved the opposite of its intended outcome. But the task of "crime prevention" is obviously not as simple as making people take responsibility for their actions. NGO's and not-for-profits are key to addressing the underlying problems that contribute to criminality, not State interventions.