When bad things happen to good intentions: the development and demise of a task force examining the drugs-violence interrelationship.

• Author: Denno, Deborah W.

Between 1994-1996, I was one of twenty-eight members of a Drugs [right arrow] Violence Task Force ("Task Force") created to report to the United States Sentencing Commission specific findings, conclusions, and recommendations concerning the interrelationship (if any) between drugs and violence.(1) The Task Force developed from the Sentencing Commission's first sponsored symposium in 1993 entitled Drugs and Violence in America.(2) The symposium was a success, but it left open many questions. Moreover, earlier task forces and commissions could not provide adequate answers; they focused either on drugs or violence and only rarely (and then, superficially) on the association between the two.(3) The Task Force constituted the first organized effort to study the drugs-violence interrelationship exclusively.(4)

This Essay discusses briefly the Task Force's goals, development, unreconciled conclusions and recommendations, as well as its ultimate demise. Much of the Essay's recount stems from the Task Force's Preliminary "Final" Report ("Final Report" or "Report")(5) which was never published and never agreed upon by all of the Task Force members. Attempts to gauge and unify Task Force members' views of the Final Report, particularly the Report's conclusions and recommendations, made clear the controversy of the subject matter.(6)

In general, much of the controversy concerning how to approach the drugs-violence problem reflects two conflicting and long-held views of drugs and crime: the criminal justice view, which emphasizes detecting and punishing drug offenders,(7) and the public health view, which advocates treating the drug addiction that leads some individuals to commit crime.(8) Traditionally, the criminal justice view is associated with a "tough on crime" attitude that attracts wide public appeal,(9) while the public health view is vulnerable to accusations of "coddling criminals."(10) Although now it appears that this tension between views may be lessening,(11) the conflict was alive and well during the years preceding the Task Force's development, and while its members were meeting. I believe the tension also contributed, in part, to the Task Force's ultimate demise and lack of consensus.

It is lamentable that the Task Force could not rise above its differences and complete an approved final report incorporating more thoroughly the varied expertise and backgrounds of its members: academics, researchers, government officials, politicians, and administrators. Then too, other factors interfered with this goal. For example, during the Task Force years, a number of individuals resigned from the Sentencing Commission and support for the Task Force waned along with the dwindling of the Commission's staff. At times I sensed unarticulated concerns that the Task Force's effort was simply too politically charged and uncomfortable.

Regardless of the disappointing outcome, however, the Task Force's Chair and members(12) deserve applause for even attempting to resolve such a politically heated topic. The Task Force's initial optimism and spirit were well founded: there had been much criticism of the drug laws, and there was a great need for change.(13) Moreover, recent trends seemingly support a number of the Final Report's proposals.(14) This change suggests that the Task Force's mix of goals and backgrounds is a preferred approach for understanding comprehensively the difficult and important problem of drugs and violence even though it may also hinder a clear group consensus.

Part I of this Essay presents briefly the Task Force's primary purpose and goals, most particularly, the study of the interrelationship between drugs and violence without presuming the nature, direction, or even existence of any sort of a causal link between the two.(15) Parts II(16) and III(17) examine, respectively, the Task Force's conclusions and recommendations, which span a very wide range. Part IV concludes that although some bad things happened to

the Task Force (its abrupt end and lack of unity), some good things happened too.(18) The production of a rich and comprehensive Final Report could not have been accomplished without such a varied Task Force membership. Future efforts may want to capitalize on group disagreements by producing a report providing majority and minority views so that individuals representing different interests may have their say. Despite the lack of consensus, it became clear that the Task Force's ideological discord could result in a fresh perspective, thereby offering changes and strategies unmatched by thoroughly unified efforts. The disunity that appeared to be a bad thing with the Drugs??Violence Task Force can be the very thing that makes forthcoming efforts effective and worthwhile.

1. THE TASK FORCE GOALS

   The Task Force's primary purpose was to better comprehend the link between drugs and violence without assuming the presence or direction of a causal relationship.(19) For example, a key concern was whether there was any such relationship at all or, alternatively, whether there were many types of relationships.(20) Assuming there was a relationship, the Task Force acknowledged the different possible directions that relationship could take: drugs may cause crime, criminality may lead to drug use, or there could be some sort of reciprocal relationship in which crime caused drug use, which in turn caused further crime, which increased and heightened prior drug use, etc.(21) The Task Force also left open whether any of these effects would be direct, indirect, both, or neither, all the while realizing that any causal relationship was likely to be complex and difficult to find.(22)

   The Task Force's refusal to presume any causal link between drugs and violence already contravened the motivating force behind many, if not most, of the more stringent drug statutes, such as the Rockefeller Drug Laws.(23) Moreover, the Task Force engaged in an extensive, multifaceted effort to study the relationship by (1) examining all the major reviews of the research published in the area as well as the most important original studies on the drugs-violence link, (2) funding four original studies further investigating the relationship, (3) inviting experts to present their research, opinions, and conclusions on major drugs-violence topics, (4) discussing the research findings among the Task Force members, and (5) applying all the substance gleaned by the research and expert presentations in drafting the Task Force's conclusions and recommendations.(24)

   One of the Task Force's major problems was defining or clarifying certain key terms to ensure a comprehensible dialogue among its members, who demonstrated a range of diverse backgrounds.(25) For example, the Task Force devoted a substantial amount of time defining the key words "violence" ("`overt behavior directed by one person against another, intended to inflict physical pain or injury'")(26) and "drug" ("any substance that produces a psychoactive effect when introduced into the human body").(27) Similarly, there was much focus on which topics the Task Force would not discuss; for example, whether to exclude the topic, the legalization and/or decriminalization of drugs, provoked long and heated debate.(28) Whereas some Task Force members believed that legalization/decriminalization might provide at least a partial solution to the violence stemming from illegal drug markets, other members were convinced that legalization/decriminalization would only worsen the drug-violence problem and enhance the total amount of harm attributable to drugs.(29) Similarly, even though Task Force members believed that some legal drugs, such as alcohol, could be relatively more harmful than illegal drugs, past difficulties linked with Prohibition suggested that the criminalization of legal substances is not effective.(30) All this groundwork laid the foundation for addressing the Task Force's "charge": to "determine the most important and most valid conclusions that can be reached concerning the potential relationship(s) between drugs and violence."(31)

2. THE UNRECONCILED TASK FORCE CONCLUSIONS

   The Final Report's conclusions(32) were unreconciled because Task Force members could not reach a unanimous consensus approving all of them.(33) Because the Final Report was written after the Task Force's last group meeting, it is difficult to know which aspects of the conclusions concerned which disagreeing members. Presumably, most of the Task Force's academics probably accepted the conclusions; however, it is likely that other members found some or all of the conclusions politically troublesome given that many seemed to counter the criminal justice view.

   The underlying framework for the Final Report's conclusions and the Task Force's study of the drugs-crime relationship was based on Paul Goldstein's model proposing three different ways in which drugs could possibly increase violence: (1) psychopharmacological violence-violent crime committed as a result of an individual's drug consumption which is typically accompanied by impulsive and/or irrational behavior, (2) economically compulsive violence-violent crime, such as robbery, committed by drug addicts to support their expensive drug habit, and (3) systemic violence-violent crime committed by individuals participating in the illegal drug market who cannot rely on the criminal justice system for protection or enforced compliance to drug contracts.(34)

   Examination of Goldstein's model required a broad review of the many types of drugs/violence research (e.g., animal studies vs. cross cultural variations), the many types of drugs (ranging from legal drugs, such as alcohol, to illegal drugs, such as crack and opiates), and mediating or confounding variables, such as patterns of drug use over time or the type of community in which most drug use occurred.(35) One of the Task Force's more intriguing questions, however, concerned the direction of the...