CONTINUING TO IMPRISON DRUG USERS IS FRUITLESS, EXPENSIVE

The United States is imprisoning drug offenders at an alarming rate.
The number of people serving time in American prisons and jails for
nonviolent drug crimes (458,131) is almost equal to the total number
of Americans who were behind bars in 1980 (474,368), according to a
recent study by the Justice Policy Institute.

Today nearly one out of four American prisoners is serving time for a
nonviolent drug crime.

Politicians say we need to build prisons to reduce violent crime. But
for the last decade, the number of people entering state prisons for
drug offenses has surpassed the number entering for violent crimes.

During that time, the number of people entering prison for a violent
crime doubled, but the number of people entering prison for nonviolent
crimes tripled. The number imprisoned for drug offenses increased
eleven-fold.

The costs of incarcerating so many drug prisoners are both morally and
financially steep. First, these incarceration policies discriminate
against minorities. Even though surveys show similar drug-use rates
for whites and blacks, our analysis found that from 1986 to 1996, the
number of white youth imprisoned for drug offenses doubled, while the
number of black youth imprisoned for the same reasons increased six
times.

Treatment Costs Less

By choosing to use prison as our principal solution for drug
addiction, we have created a situation where one in three young black
men is under some form of criminal-justice control (prison, parole or
probation).

The war on drugs is expensive, too. Our study estimates that this
country spends $9 billion incarcerating drug offenders each year.

Sending the same people to outpatient drug-treatment programs would
cost a third as much. According to research by the Rand Corp.,
spending money to provide treatment for heavy cocaine users would
reduce drug consumption by nearly four times as much as spending the
same amount on law enforcement.

Americans have the right to be safe from violent criminals. But we
should demand that our government pursue fiscally prudent and humane
policies to limit drug addiction. Locking up nonviolent drug offenders
is no solution.