Doug Pensinger wrote:
>
> Robert Seeberger wrote:
> > http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0818/p02s01-usju.html
>
> > The prison population has quadrupled since 1980. Much of that surge is the
> > result of public policy, such as the war on drugs and mandatory minimum
> > sentencing. Nearly 1 in 4 of the inmates in federal and state prisons are
> > there because of drug-related offenses, most of them nonviolent.
> >
> > Narcotic-related arrests
> >
> > New drug policies have especially affected incarceration rates for women,
> > which have increased at nearly double the rate for men since 1980. Nearly 1
> > in 3 women in prison today are serving sentences for drug-related crimes.
>
> Wow, 25% of the men incarcerated and an incredible 33% of the women
> on drug related offenses! More evidence that the war on drugs is a
> miserable failure.
Let's not forget the whole Tulia fiasco, either, where they took the
word of a law enforcement officer who should have been stripped of the
priviledge of a badge before the whole mess started, and arrested 46
(mostly minority) and threw something like 39 of them into jail, after
blatantly unfair trials, because this yahoo with a badge managed to
convince the right people that a fairly small community had a big-time
drug ring operating. (I'm not sure what bothers me more, the woman
taken away from her young children when she was documentably in another
*state* on the day the jerk claimed she'd sold him drugs, or the elderly
pig farmer being thrown in prison....)
Julia
although the operators of the meth lab in my friend's old apartment
complex *did* have it coming, IMO
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