In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

 Conclusion Livin’ in the world no different from a cell. —Inspectah Deck in Wu-Tang, “C.R.E.A.M.,” Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993 On February 23, 2008, an article in the New York Times alerted audiences to a new drug “scourge” in Argentina that has an eerie resemblance to the history of crack cocaine in the United States.1 The article charts the “irrepressible spread of paco, a highly addictive, smokable cocaine residue that has destroyed thousands of lives in Argentina and caused a cycle of drug-induced street violence never seen before.” In the early 2000s, the article reports, “crude yellowish crystals” began to show up in impoverished neighborhoods across the country. The narcotics officers who are quoted throughout the article claim that much of the spread is due to the large, porous border Argentina shares with Bolivia, which “[f]ewer than 200 federal police officers patrol,” thereby “leaving traffickers free rein.” Most interesting, though, is the connection made between paco’s “highly addictive” nature and the way in which it is made. According to the article, “Paco is even more toxic than crack because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine.” This highly addictive toxicity, the article relates, has driven young addicts into “drug-induced hysterias,” and has galvanized local communities around efforts to stop the “plague.” Recalling the ways in which the crack era transformed violence from a culturally based, honorbound form to an unpredictable, entrepreneurial force, one local woman explains, ‘”Before there were codes. . . . Now there are no codes. We need to stand up and stick it to two or three dealers.’” With a few minor alterations, this article could be an exact copy of those written at the height of the crack panic. To those of us who have  x Conclusion lived through that panic, the article—which relies primarily on quotations from narcotics officers—sounds like the not-so-distant drumbeat of another variation on a drug war. As with crack, the danger of paco seems to rely on a similarly paradoxical form of reasoning. Paco’s supposedly addictive danger lies in the fact that it is even more impure than crack. According to the article, paco is primarily composed of chemicals, with just a “dab” of cocaine. Yet, as in America’s response to crack, paco is presented as a social problem that can and should be punished away. The suggestion, however, that the criminal justice system could ever do anything of substance about a “scourge” of crystallized kerosene being smoked by impoverished youth is profoundly problematic. And, in fact, it is a young paco user’s own explanation of his addiction that throws the irrationality of such an approach into full relief. In his words, it was the “’desperation and depression’” of Argentina’s severe economic crisis— and the “’pressure that it causes in a person’”—that led him to addictively inhale a cocaine-infused chemical cocktail. If this book communicates only one larger notion about the cultural lives of crime and punishment, I hope it is this: no matter who calls for its use, modern punishment, in the words of criminologist Todd Clear, is, without question, “a blunt instrument. It does not offer a panorama of finely calibrated experiences designed to surgically counteract the forces of evil.”2 While criminal justice has an important part to play in social justice generally, this role is overstated by those—whether on the Right or on the Left—who advocate for increased punitiveness, regardless of how obvious or just their ultimate cause may seem. In truth, the brutally complex nature of real-world suffering can only be addressed by the criminal justice system the one way it has ever addressed anything—through reductive efforts to separate the guilty from the innocent, the predators from the victims. Social complexity is incomprehensible to criminal justice , which is structured against it. Pure victims and pure offenders rarely exist in the real world, and, instead, reflect artificial, narrow abstractions that must fit into the only dichotomy that is ever allowed: right and wrong. This ruthlessly unreal logic is ill suited for healing the multifaceted effects of real-world trauma, which require healing and help beyond the anger stage of state retaliation. None of this is the fault of either criminal justice agents or their agencies, however. Indeed, the system has done precisely what we’ve asked it to do—put people away. And it continues...

Share