The United States likes to portray itself as the "Land of the Free" yet we lock up more people overall and per capita than any country in the world. A new study out today found that one out of three people in the United States will be arrested by the time they are 23.
1 out 3 arrested by the time they are 23?! You want some more shameful stats? With just under 5% of the world's population, we have nearly 25% of the world's prison population -- and the war on drugs is the driving force. Last year there were more than 1.6 million people arrested on drug charges and almost half of those arrests were for marijuana possession alone.
These embarrassing numbers remind me of Virginia Senator Jim Webb's line about the broken United States criminal justice system and the need to look at our country's laws: "With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different -- and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter."
Senator Webb tried a few months ago to pass legislation creating a bi-partisan blue-ribbon commission to make recommendations for reducing incarceration and recidivism but Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and other Republicans filibustered it.
Last week we witnessed the U.S. leaving Iraq after nine long years and questionable success. It is time to find an exit strategy from our 40-year-old war on drugs that is unquestionably a failure.
Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org)
Follow Tony Newman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TonyNewmanDPA
I'm afraid that because of the unrelenting obsession that our national government has with the "war on drugs", we now live in the "home of the [folks who can afford a good lawyer and/or go] free [on bail if they are arrested and/or convicted until they have thoroughly exhausted all avenues to keep from being forced to begin serving ridiculously long sentences, and increasingly more often in one of the many privately run for-profit prisons in our country]."
TTG
When my Dad was a kid (in the 20s), he and his buddies used to think it was the funniest thing to tie a rope around somebody's outhouse and hoist it up in the air. If the cops caught them they all got a paddling from the cop and then taken home to get another one. That was destruction of property.
Not sure what the kids are doing today, but I'm sure the cops are not allowed to discipline them and take them home. We used to get "the fear of God" put in us by our parents, teachers, and cops. Kids today aren't afraid of doing things wrong like we were. I still tell DH that I am NOT going to the big house for anybody, so he is not allowed to bring Cuban cigars back into the US.
What really blows is the lifetime ban on firearm ownership. Maybe for violent offenders, but not for everyone convicted of some act or omission that violates a statute.
f/f
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The U.S. probably isn't ready to decriminalize everything, but pot is our #1 drug of choice by a wide margin, so it's clearly a good place to start.