In 2010 the U.S federal government spent 15 billion dollars on the War on Drugs. This equals a rate of nearly 500 dollars per second and does not include state spending or housing costs for those jailed in this failed War. Despite all the money spent and harsh drug sentencing policies, drug use in America has been on the rise for several decades. With increased drug use comes increased drug related crime, increased HIV infections and of course the ever increasing costs involved in a war that simply cannot be won in the traditional sense. While it is true that the War on Drugs as a policy is fundamentally broken, there is currently a trend towards new types of policies which could offer more effective solutions.
The War on Drugs has created more problems than it has solved. While effectively filling our prisons over capacity, it does nothing to address the source of the problem leaving those incarcerated with the threat of going back soon after release. From 1980 to 1996, incarceration rates in America grew by 200 percent. The reasons for this appear to be dominated by drug offenses, which grew by ten times during this time frame. As a country we incarcerate people at an extremely high rate, the cost of which is neither cheap financially nor does generally lead to rehabilitation. In Alabama for fiscal year 2010 the annual total cost of state prisons ran a total of 462.5 million, with an average annual cost per prisoner of 17,285 dollars. The prison population in Alabama consisted of 51% serving time for non-violent and drug related offenses, and those numbers stay similar no matter where you look in the United States. With recidivism rates similar to other offenders, nearly 51.8% will return to prison within three years. This cr...
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...ver, there is a solution as demonstrated by Portugal. Not only a solution, but a cost effective means of talking a human issue involving families that deserve a chance to be free from addiction, as well as prosecution.
Works Cited
Blumstein, Alfred. “Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996.” Crime and Justice 26.17 (1999): n. pag. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
Greenwald, Glenn, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful.Drug Policies (April 2, 2009). Cato Institute Whitepaper Series
Steenhuysen, Julie. "UPDATE 1-HIV Rate among US Intravenous Drug Users Falls-CDC." Reuters. N.p., 01 Mar. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2013
"The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers." Vera Instute of Justice. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
United States. Office of National Drug Control Policy. The White House. Whitehouse.gov. N.p., May 2009. Web.
The War on Drugs is believed to help with many problems in today’s society such as realizing the rise of crime rates and the uprooting of violent offenders and drug kingpin. Michelle Alexander explains that the War on Drugs is a new way to control society much like how Jim Crow did after the Civil War. There are many misconceptions about the War on Drugs; commonly people believe that it’s helping society with getting rid of those who are dangerous to the general public. The War on Drugs is similar to Jim Crow by hiding the real intention behind Mass Incarceration of people of color. The War on Drugs is used to take away rights of those who get incarcerated. When they plead guilty, they will lose their right to vote and have to check application
Howard, John. “The Effects of Prison Overcrowding.” P.A.T.R.I.C.K. Crusade. N.a., May 2002. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
FITZPATRICK, Michael (2001). “The Lessons of the Drugs War”, Spiked,. Online at: , consulted on March 30th, 2004.
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
I base my support of the decriminalization of all drugs on a principle of human rights, but the horror and frustration with which I voice this support is based on practicality. The most tangible effect of the unfortunately labeled "Drug War" in the United States is a prison population larger than Russia's and China's, and an inestimable death toll that rivals the number of American casualties from any given war, disease or catastrophe.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy (2011). War on Drugs Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy June 2011. Retrieved from http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/themes/gcdp_v1/pdf/Global_Commission_Report_English.pdf
The war on drugs, which started in the United States, has become widespread in many countries around the world, and increasingly so in Canada (Odeh, 2013). It has been shown that the war on drugs is an inefficient way to minimize or even control drug use and possession (Odeh, 2013). This begs the question then as to why the war on drugs is still being waged with increasing force. The United States, which started the war on drugs, now has the highest prison population per capita in the world, with 730 of every 100,000 people imprisoned (Odeh, 2013). Furthermore, more than half of these people in prison are serving sentences for drug crimes (Odeh, 2013). Despite the fact that it costs taxpayers a lot of money, with no results; drug use and the amount of drugs in the US hasn’t decreased, the war on drugs has not stopped. While some Americans, even very conservative ones (CBC, 2011) have come to the conclus...
Authorizing Legislation Office of National drug Control Policy, retrieved on March 20, 2012 from http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/about/authorizing_legislation.html
“More than half of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug crimes…” (Branson, 2012). Nonviolent drug offenses in America are unrightly over punished, causing more harm than good to those charged and all American citizens. Drug arrests and imprisonments are far too common and are taking focus off of more important crimes. The sentences for nonviolent drug crimes are far too long and harsh for the crime. Punishment against nonviolent drug crimes are not working and is causing more harm than good. The harsh punishment for nonviolent drug offenses might not seem like a problem at first, but it causes a huge toll on everyone involved. A simple nonviolent drug arrest could ruin an otherwise law abiding citizens’ life. The war on drugs is damaging
Tooley Michael, “ Our Current Drug Legalization: Grounds for Reconsideration,” Newsletter of the Center for Values and Social Policy, vol8, no. 1, Spring 1994. Rpt.in Current Issues and Enduring Questions. Ed. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1996. 385-89.
Crime does in fact need to be addressed in this nation and especially drug related crimes. Statistics by the Office of National Drug Control Policy say that the drug arrests that were made in 1999 alone total over 1.5 million (Schmidt 1). In 2002 the estimated cost of ...
...ed that economically just cannabis decriminalization has got an enormous value and it wouldn’t be advisable to rope in other illicit drugs as well. Not only because hard drugs form a very small portion in drug trade in relation to marijuana, but also they bring with themselves numerous negative externalities such as extreme increase in consumption and health issues which shall be difficult to control as seen in Portugal (Consumption amplified by at almost double for hard drugs)
Recreational drug use has been controversial for years. Government has deemed the use of certain drugs to be dangerous, addictive, costly, and fatal. Governmental agencies have passed laws to make drugs illegal and then have focused a great deal of attention and money trying to prohibit the use of these drugs, and many people support these sanctions because they view the illegality of drugs to be the main protection against the destruction of our society (Trebach, n.d.). Restricting behavior doesn’t generally stop people from engaging in that behavior; prohibition tends to result in people finding more creative ways to obtain and use drugs. However, just knowing that trying to control people’s behavior by criminalizing drug use does not work still leaves us looking for a solution, so what other options exist? This paper will discuss the pros and cons about one option: decriminalizing drugs.
Under the current prison system, many offenders of nonviolent crimes are getting much longer sentences than actually necessary. Many of these nonviolent crimes are drug crimes, such as dealing. “There are more than a half-million people in state or federal prisons for drug offense today today, up from 41,000 in 1980,” this rapid increase in incarceration for drug offenses highlights the injustice of our prison
Although there is always a reason someone is placed behind bars, sometimes there are the ones who do not have a reason. However, not only are these rates astounding and troubling to the economy, but they are also affecting the prisons themselves by overcrowding. For example, a jail in Florida is capable of holding about one hundred and fifty inmates, but is currently housing close to two hundred and thirty. Overcrowding got so bad in California that the Supreme Court ruled in “cruel and unusual punishment” not long ago. Proven programming and treatment is a more appropriate response to certain offenses. One solution to this is to send fewer people to prison for drug charges, or at least reduce the time they are required to serve. Another suggestion would be to require offenders to serve seventy percent of their sentence instead of the eighty five percent the “truth-in-sentencing” states. A major fix would be to send foreign offenders back to their home countries. Studies have shown that by these tragedies the federal government could save billions and stop endangering the lives of inmates and correction officers due to