Serious violent crime levels declined since 1993
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Property crime rates continue to decline.
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Violent crime rates declined for both males and females since 1994.
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Firearm-related crime has plummeted since 1993, then slightly increased in 2005

www.ojp.usdoj.gov...

Estimated arrests for drug abuse violations by age group, 1970-2005

1970 adult - 322,300 juvenile - 93,300

-snip-

2005 adult - 1,654,600 juvemile - 191,800

www.ojp.usdoj.gov...

For violent offenses, the number of persons in prison began at 173,300 in 1980 and increased to a high of 650,400 in 2003.

For property offenses, the number of persons in prison began at 89,300 in 1980 and rose to 262,000 in 2003.

For drug offenses, the number of persons in prison began at 19,000 in 1980 and rose, reaching 265,000 in 2002. Then the number decreased to 250,900 in 2003.

For public order offenses, the number of persons in prison began at 12,400 in 1980 and increased to a high of 129,900 in 2001. The number then decreased, reaching 86,400 in 2003.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - With its scantily-clad prostitutes posing in brothel windows and coffee shops oozing the pungent aroma of cannabis smoke, Amsterdam's Red Light District has always thrived on its seedy atmosphere.

But while the city has long tolerated coffee shops where marijuana is sold openly and fully legalized prostitution in the year 2000, authorities say the network of cobbled alleys and canals is a haven for organized crime where mobsters launder money through real estate, brothels and bars.

"We are very worried about the mixing of the underworld with the above board in the centre of Amsterdam," the city said Thursday in a press release.

"Particularly in the Red Light District, money laundering from real estate... and involvement of organized crime in prostitution, coffee shops, smart shops, and parts of the hotel industry is a cause for concern."
cnews.canoe.ca...

“People in high political circles are saying it can’t be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed,” said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. “People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society.”

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic “magic mushrooms.” Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands’ famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops — known here as “coffee shops.”
The Netherlands is going through the same racial, ethnic and religious metamorphosis as the rest of Western Europe: Large influxes of black, Arab and Muslim immigrants are changing the social complexion of an overwhelmingly white, Christian nation struggling with its loss of homogeneity.

But here those anxieties are exacerbated by alarm over the international crime organizations that have infiltrated the country’s prostitution and drug trades, the increasing prevalence of trafficking in women and children across its borders, and dismay over the Netherlands’ image as an international tourist destination for drugs and sexual debauchery.
De Wolf, the Amsterdam councilman, is part of that movement.

“In the past, we looked at legal prostitution as a women’s liberation issue; now it’s looked at as exploitation of women and should be stopped,” said de Wolf, sitting in the offices of the medical complex where he works as an HIV-AIDS researcher.

He said Amsterdam’s police force is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to fight the sophisticated foreign organized crime networks operating in the city. Laws designed to regulate prostitution and brothel operators have instead opened the trade to criminal gangs, according to de Wolf and other city officials.

So then, each of the arguments in favour is flawed, not just slightly, but seriously.Each point made by the pro-drugs lobby is based on a truth, but with no understanding of the consequences.

Drug laws help contain a huge social evil which, if they were swept away, would spread unchecked through every layer of society.The truth is that no one can possible be certain what the effect would be but one thing is certain:it would be impossible to reverse the tide in the short to medium term by tightening laws again.Even if it turned out that legalisation created fewer problems than it might, we have no means of knowing and the stakes are too high to abandon caution.

It is sobering to look at what has happened in Amsterdam, where relaxation over the personal use of Marijuana has led to problems. Technically it is illegal to buy and sell Marijuana but official policy is one of toleration.At licensed house parties, a government-funded testing service checks the purity of Ecstasy tablets, but people are not encouraged to use the drug and the police have powers to arrest anyone carrying drugs in.The Netherlands has fewer drug-related deaths and a lower rate of experimental use among school pupils than many other European countries.

All this sounds very promising, positive steps towards formal legalisation with few social costs.But that is just the surface. Many people are beginning to question the experiment.Walking around Amsterdam recently I saw some of the most blatant drug dealing on the street, and drug taking, that I have ever witnessed in any city.Right in front of the main station for example a crowd from nowhere gathered in a few seconds around a man with a plastic bag,bustling around as eager as a flock of hungry pigeons.Within a couple of minutes they were facing walls, on the ground, sitting standing, taking what they were taking.

Amsterdam is a magnet for every man and woman in Europe that would like to be able to sit in a public café and get stoned - or more.People say that if every city was run like Amsterdam, the novelty would wear off.However unless it was the case in every city in the world we would still be likely to see drugs-related tourism.Something has gone wrong with the experiment.Indeed, it has not been repeated across the Netherlands for very good reasons.What parent of teenage children wants to live in a street where Marijuana is openly on sale?

Holland is now clamping down on marijuana growers with a new Act of Parliament.At the same time new powers have been given to town mayors to close the Marijuana coffee shops if hard drugs are sold, delivered, supplied or found on the premises.

The Swiss also made an experiment of their own.A particular park in down-town Zurich was designated a protected area where drug users could go and use drugs without arrest.This was Zurich's answer to the growing drugs menace.Don't harass, just embrace.Don't make things difficult for drug users, make them easy.Instead of hounding them from street corner to street corner, welcome them into a nice open space.No doubt some thought it would mean that scenes like that outside Amsterdam station would move off the streets altogether.

However the park quickly became famous among drug injectors across Switzerland and in other nations.It became a drug injector's paradise, a safe haven for the largest dealers.Non-users felt intimidated, afraid to enter the park or even to go near it.Eventually it all became too much for the city to cope with and the freedoms were removed.
www.globalchange.com...