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Milton Friedman on crime and the law

Friedman on the crime that prohibition creates and on what law enforcement can reasonably accomplish.

4 passages in the archive2 checked against the source2 not yet checked
  1. Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy
    Not yet checked
  2. We have as many criminals as we have because we have as many laws to break as we have. You take the situation in the United States. We have two million people in prison, four million people who are under parole or under supervision. Why? Because of our mistaken attempt to control what people put in their bodies. Prohibition of so-called drugs, of illegal drugs, is a major reason for all of those prisons. And those are victimless crimes, which should not be crimes.
    Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
    Interview, 2000, PBS, “Where We Stand Today,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript
  3. You can rigidly enforce only those laws that most people believe to be good laws, that is, laws that proscribe actions that they would avoid even in the absence of laws. When laws render illegal actions that many or most people regard as moral and proper, they can be enforced only by brute force. Speed laws are an obvious example; alcohol prohibition, a more dramatic one.
    Why Government Is the Problem
    Journal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 2
    Checked against the sourceRead the original
  4. Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement.
    An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy
    Book, 1966, p. 161
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