This reduction in prison population is, at root, a consequence of ending drug prohibition. In the US, state voters are working on this in places like Colorado,

This reduction in prison population is, at root, a consequence of ending drug prohibition. In the US, state voters are working on this in places like Colorado, Washington, and now my home state, Massachusetts. So far, voters have had to do it. Legislatures can't, yet, do it, because the vested special interests in continuing prohibition are too strong. I'm sure somebody can speak for California; I don't know much about the situation there. The Washington cannabis-legalization model is based on a juridical argument: it's crazy to kick young people to the curb, take away their scholarships, and throw them in jail, for pot smoking, even though smoking pot is harmful. It wastes time and distracts the police from dealing with worse stuff like "human trafficking" (kidnapping teens and compelling them to work in the sex trade) and domestic violence. The Colorado / Massachusetts model is based on a recreational argument. Cannabis is safer and less harmful than alcohol. People will use substances for fun. The less harmful those substances are, the better. Both models involve regulation: purity, labeling, "carding" kids to keep them away from the stuff. Both involve taxation. The recreational model is harder to use when arguing to end the prohibition of other drugs. Heroin and cocaine are, in fact, safer than alcohol when criminal gangs aren't involved in delivering them to users. The statistics come from experiments in various places where clinical decriminalization has been tried. But that's a very hard argument to make. The juridical argument is easier to use to convince people. Both models cut down on police work, court work, and prison populations. As prohibition gradually contracts, lots of people will find themselves out of work: El Chapo and his cartel gangs, the Crips and Bloods, local gangs like the Insane Unknowns (who controlled the neighborhood where I lived as a graduate student on the south side of Chicago), police, probation workers, prison workers, and so forth. People resist being thrown out of work, so eliminating prohibition will take another generation. People with access to legislatures (police, court, prison people) will resist there. The other side will fight it in the streets. But it will happen. More info? Chasing the Scream, by Johann Hari. http://www.worldcat.org/title/chasing-the-scream-the-first-and-last-days-of-the-war-on-drugs/oclc/881418255 http://www.worldcat.org/title/chasing-the-scream-the-first-a...