From John Cochrane at The Grumpy Economist, Work and Jail [1]
excerpt:
So, bottom left, in the last census, 19.2% of 20-24 year olds were employed, and 26.4 (!) percent were in jail. Read up, and it was not always thus. Of the cohort born in the 1930s, at the same age, 68% were employed and 6.7% were in jail — in a society and criminal justice system that was, whatever our current faults, much more overtly racist. The numbers for older men are just as shocking if you haven’t see these before.
Interesting observations fro the New York Times Review [2]:
The war on drugs mangled, if not destroyed, any trust between residents of distressed urban communities and the authorities.
Young men like Mike often avoid girlfriends for fear that the women, for their own reasons, might turn their paramours in.
HKO
The war on drugs may have destroyed more institutions than we realized. It may have caused worse outcomes in the minority communities than the perverse incentives of other misguided government policies. And it may be a cause of sustained high unemployment in minroity communities.