Sharp Sighted And Blind

Recent news reports have revealed unspeakable levels of corruption at the Baltimore Detention Center. It appears that over time, the prisoners - rather than the correction officials - took control of the facility. Apparently, dozens of individuals were involved in smuggling drugs and cellphones to inmates. These activities in turn allowed high-ranking members of the ubiquitous criminal gang known as the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) to run their criminal syndicate from inside the walls of the jail. Most shocking perhaps is that the level of corruption was such that three female officers became pregnant by the leader of the operation.

Some have tried to pin the blame for this scandal on state and city officials, and there is no doubt that someone should be taken to task for allowing a collection of foxes to take over the chicken coop. However, if one truly wants to understand the reason incidents such as these take place, one need only examine the life of Alfonse Capone.

Popular culture has painted Capone as a ruthless gangster. He was that, but at the same time he was an exceedingly astute businessman. Prohibition made it hard for millions of Americans to get their hands on alcoholic beverages. Capone understood that the demand was such that he would make enough money to run his empire with impunity.

Apparently, Capone budgeted a quarter of a million dollars each year to bribe police, judges, elected officials and anyone else who might interfere with his operation. A quarter of a million dollars was a lot of money in the 1920s. To Capone, on the other hand, it was peanuts. During the height of his empire he was pulling down $100 million a year in profit.

There was no secret to his success. As he once noted, “All I do is to supply a public demand … somebody had to throw some liquor on that thirst, why not me?” Over time, armed with endless amounts of cash, Capone was able to control the system.

Along these same lines, the American people, including a large number of Marylanders, have an insatiable appetite for illegal drugs. Like Capone, gangs like the BGF are more than happy to satisfy the demand and they are getting rich doing it. Ergo, the reason the BGF was able to gain control of the Baltimore Detention Center was based largely on their ability to use these profits to bribe and control those who were supposed to be controlling them.

If you can consistently offer prison officials and corrections officers exceedingly lucrative monetary bribes, sooner or later you will get enough of them to come over to your side or at least look the other way. In short, criminal gangs derive their power and influence from the sale of substances that you can’t buy in a store.

Is legalization the “answer”? I’m not sure. Making cocaine and heroin legal would perhaps bring about even greater troubles. However, the fact is that the profits from the sale of illegal drugs are what give groups like the BGF their power.

The French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld once noted that “self-interest makes some people blind, and others sharp-sighted.” He was correct. It appears that BGF leaders were sharp-sighted enough to know that copious amounts of drug profits, given to the right people, would blind the system to their activities.

In short, we as a society should stop worrying so much about keeping cellphones out of prisons and focus more on taking the obscene profits out of the sale of illegal drugs. Until we do, these kinds of activities will continue.