4 ms·

End the 'war on' drugs. Completely. Either we own ourselves or we don't.

• rayiner 11y ago
  26% of women in prison are there for drug crimes. 66% are there for violent and property crimes. So you still have the problem of what to do with their kids.
  • jakeogh 11y ago
    Thanks. 28% is a good start, I don't see how to improve the rest other than the suggestions in the article.
    • themartorana 11y ago
      It's a magnificent start. Hard to correlate are what percentage of the 72% are drug-related - in pursuit of drugs, etc.
• vonklaus 11y ago
  In America nearly 50% of the federal prison population are in for drug offenses according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons data current as of may 30th, 2015[0]. [0]http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offens... edit: As pointed out below it was the federal prison pop. Also, made it more obvious that I didn't mean 50% of America's total population.
  • tomjakubowski 11y ago
    That's 50% of the prison population, to be clear.
  • tptacek 11y ago
    No, that's 50% of the federal prison population (notice how the totals add up). Most incarcerated Americans are in state prisons, and drug crimes are a much smaller fraction of most state prison inmate populations.
    • ams6110 11y ago
      Directly drug-related (possession or trafficking) yes... but how many property and violent crimes have their root cause being drug-related? I would guess many.
      • rayiner 11y ago
        And how many violent criminals are in prison on drug charges because they're easier to prove? I think people too readily accept the narrative that crime in the U.S. can be traced back to the drug war. Here is drug war spending: http://cdn.thewire.com/media/old_wire/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-addiction/original.png http://cdn.thewire.com/media/old_wire/img/upload/2012/10/12/... Here is violent crime rate: http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Roman_blog4.pdf http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/... Violent crime started trending up in 1963, about 8 years before Nixon declared the war on drugs. By the time the drug war really got going in 1982-86, violent crime rates had already tripled.
        • Zigurd 11y ago
          It was lead in paint and gas that caused a rise in violent crime. It wasn't prisons that stopped that. The Drug War and school-to-prison pipleline are real, too. We farm black people to keep no-neck white men in "good jobs at good wages." If anything, the Drug War is preventing a further drop in crime as lead gets flushed out of the environment.
          • rayiner 11y ago
            Everybody has their theory of why crime increased in the 70's and started coming down after the 90's. People tend to adopt the theory that fits their worldview. I'm partial to the lead theory myself because I'm a rabid environmentalists. Urbanists blame suburbanization and white flight. Civil libertarians blame the drug war. There is no conclusive proof or even extensive evidence in favor of any of those theories. But I think the drug war theory is one of the less compelling explanations given the evidence we have.
• watmough 11y ago
  End private prisons that can incentivize arrest and imprisonment for minor offenders. No cite but commonly acknowledged that creating private prisons also creates a demand for prisoners. The US puts a larger percentage of its population behind bars than any other country.
  • rayiner 11y ago
    > No cite but commonly acknowledged that creating private prisons also creates a demand for prisoners. Commonly acknowledged, but wrongly. Look at the inflection points in the U.S. incarceration rate: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/U.S._inc... Growth started in 1972-73. The growth rate kneed around 2000. Compare with the prison prison population: http://static.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/graphs/privateprisoners.jpg http://static.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/graphs/privatepri.... They were pretty much insignificant until the 1990's. By then, the growth trend in incarceration rates was firmly established, and indeed, was closer to the knee in 2000 than to the initial upswing in the 1970's. What happened in the 1980's and 1990's? Privatization of many other government services: http://www.kevingunn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TotalFedEmplPerCapita.png http://www.kevingunn.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TotalFed.... The most reasonable conclusion from the data is that private prisons are not creating the demand for prisoners, but rather reacting to the demand for privatizing government services generally. I fully agree that private prisons should be illegal, but they didn't create the problem. We created the problem, with three strikes laws and cracking down on probation. E.g. http://www.dc.state.fl.us/secretary/press/2001/timeserved.html http://www.dc.state.fl.us/secretary/press/2001/timeserved.ht.... In 1991, Florida prisoners served about 35% of their sentences. Due to a state law, by 2001 it was 83%.
  • ams6110 11y ago
    The percentage of individuals incarcerated in private prisons is still a small (but growing) minority (maybe 10% or so, but much higher for juveniles). I think you have cause and effect reversed. The war on drugs created the demand for more prison space, which gave rise to the private prison industry. The related scandals and corruption (judges being paid for sentences, etc.) all stem from that.