Report: 3 Percent of U.S. Population in Criminal System in 2005
That's pretty sad. Jeralyn at Talkleft always talks about how this is becoming a "prison nation". I wonder what the exact mix of folks locked up or otherwise in the system for non-violent drug offenses is.
About 3 percent of the U.S. adult population was incarcerated or on parole or probation at the end of last year, a government report said today.
All told, a record seven million men and women were in the U.S. correctional population, which includes parolees or those on probation at the end of 2005, according to a report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
...
The report also noted that the federal prison system was operating at 34 percent over capacity at the end of last year.
From purely economic standpoint, it's time to start re-examining the cost of locking up non-violent drug offenders at both the state and federal levels. With the cost of the Iraq War dragging our future generations into massive and eternal debt, perhaps legalization and treatment might start looking like reasonable alternatives.
The revenues collected from the sale of legalized pot might be a healthy offset for revenue lost from the nonsensical tax-cutting of the 1600 Crew. The money could be used to pay for education, substance abuse treatment and bringing former prisoners back into society.
Utopian? Yeah, maybe. But at the present rate, we can't have everything and current research is showing that the Killer Weed is hardly the evil drug that it has been branded as for so long. The war on drugs is an utter failure, and the 1600 Crew's War on Brown People is failing even more extravagently. It's time to start talking real alternatives if for no other reason than the economic health of our country.
