Re-entry Programs: an Idea whose Time is Now
About thirty-five years ago, Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, we've spent more money on that war than in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug crimes. Prisons are America's fastest growing industry, with 2.2 million Americans currently locked up. We're making 1.9 million arrests and spending $70 billion on drug crimes every year, yet drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far more available than ever before. What is the solution?
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
-Abraham Lincoln
A Rand Corporation study conducted fifteen years ago resulted in a team of mathematicians calculating the most cost effective tactics: law enforcement, interdiction, foreign aid, treatment, and prevention. They found that only treatment was effective.
The hard evidence they presented has had no impact on drug policies that have failed to reduce drug addiction, crime, and/or juvenile drug use. The drug war continues and each of these problems continues to increase.
During alcohol prohibition, murder went up 13% and robbery, 83%. Prohibition ended in 1933, and violent crimes returned to their pre-prohibition levels by 1937. It is estimated that 80 percent of felonies are drug related. One of the drug war's hypocrisies is that its purpose is to prevent harm to users. While drug addicts do serious damage to their lives, the drug war destroys those lives.
The number of Americans behind bars for drug offenses, mostly nonviolent, has increased by 1,200 percent since 1980. Legendary NYPD crusader, Frank Serpico, describes the prison system as an industry. "They run it like real estate. They have so many rooms, they have to rent them out, and the police fill them."
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As states across the country confront historic budget shortfalls, more and more politicians are looking toward long-overdue criminal justice reform as a way to cut spending. Suddenly, the money local governments stand to save by slowing down incarceration rates is trumping the political costs traditionally associated with it. Good news. The nation's prisons have been dysfunctional and overcrowded for ages, reaching emergency levels in recent years. Around this time last year, a study released by the Pew Center found that 1 in 100 Americans was behind bars.
The cost of locking up parole violators has been a major drain on states' resources -- and no state knows this better than California. In 2002, a study by the Justice Policy Center calculated that the Golden State -- which leads the country in the size of its parole population and recidivism rates -- spent some $900 million a year to keep parole violators (who spend an average of five months in prison) incarcerated. That year, according to the same study, nearly 1 in 5 parolees lived in California.
President Obama is on the right track as it is definitely TIME FOR A CHANGE, and aftercare and re-entry programs are the solution.
Posted By: The Candid Blogger
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