Lessons from America's failed war on drugs

[ed the head]

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... -on-drugs/

'One of the signatories to the letter is Eric E. Sterling, who helped U.S. politicians write minimum
sentencing laws in the 1980s, in his role as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. “Imposing
long jail terms for minor drug offences has been a mistake in the United States, and won’t work in Canada,”
Mr. Sterling told the CBC.

And he should know, as the tough-on-crime laws developed in the 1980s and ‘90s led directly to America’s out of control prison population. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, incarceration rates in the United States between 1880 and 1970 ranged from about 100 to 200 inmates per 100,000 people. After 1980, that number began to skyrocket: Increasing to 753 by 2008. In comparison, Canada’s rate remained fairly steady between 2006 and 2010, at about 140 prisoners for every 100,000 people, according to Statistics Canada.

The increase in the U.S. prison population had nothing to do with an increase in actual crime. Rates of violent and property crimes have decreased significantly since the ‘80s — in both the United States and Canada. The increase in American prison populations is directly related to mandatory minimum and three-strikes-you’re-out laws. Upwards of 60% of U.S. prisoners have been incarcerated for non-violent crimes; 20% of all inmates have been locked away for non-violent drug-related offences — double the percentage in 1980. This trend has cost taxpayers a great deal.'

[Uncle Ron]

Thanks ed...
This got me thinking about the big leap in privatization of prisons in the US.
Although there are better ref., I used WIKI, so take with a gram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
Scroll down to the US part. War on drugs was a major contributor, but the real motivators were and still are money and power.

...

[ed the head]

Thanks ed...
This got me thinking about the big leap in privatization of prisons in the US.
Although there are better ref., I used WIKI, so take with a gram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
Scroll down to the US part. War on drugs was a major contributor, but the real motivators were and still are money and power.

...

Thanks Ron.

For most of my life I have lived in or around NY, but for 3 years I lived in rural southern Virginia where I saw evidence of this first hand. People
in the surrounding area were unashamed to admit that they favored retaining these counter productive mandatory minimum sentences for drugs just so that they would not lose a local 'employer', the 'correctional' facility. Short sighted and unsustainable.