Originally Posted by gem

7M in U.S. jails, on probation or parole - Yahoo! News

7M in U.S. jails, on probation or parole

By KASIE HUNT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 18 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday....

..."Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."

From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.
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I'm starting to wonder- no, that's a lie, I've been wondering for several decades now- just what the reactionary, fear-based thinking of the Conservative Right is worth. They seem to keep demanding actions and penalties that only serve to make a potentially bad situation worse. As in prohibition, they sought to eliminate a "social problem" only to create a host of new problems while failing to eliminate that which they feared. On top of it like-minded conservatives demanded action in the "War on Drugs" that accomplished little more than helping to empower not only the drug cartels and criminal gangs but have inadvertently helped provide incredible wealth to groups like the Taliban and al Qeada.
Wouldn't it make more sense to reduce our prison population and rip the profits out from under the drug cartels, criminal gangs and terror groups like the Taliban and al Qeada by legalizing them?
It should have been done a long time ago, but it's that "lure of easy money" that has apparently prevented that. It has a very strong appeal!

Sadly, as a result, we currently have more people per capita in prison in this "land of the free" than any other nation on earth- including the most repressive ones!

Something is very wrong with this picture!

Gem

Originally Posted by Wallaroo

Estimated guess: At least 10% of all people belong in prison anyway.

Originally Posted by gem

If you're talking about all the real criminals I would agree.

Originally Posted by Wallaroo

Estimated guess: At least 10% of all people belong in prison anyway.