PRIORITY TEST: HEALTH CARE OR PRISONS?

At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it
supposedly is "too expensive," how is it that we can afford to
imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California -- for
stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he
already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at
age 19), and so the "three strikes" law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends
almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it's also an extraordinary
waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the
world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States
is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of
people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion
of people who have no medical care -- and partly as a result, our
health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are
unusually poor.

It's time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice
system, as legislation sponsored by Senator Jim Webb has called for,
so that we're no longer squandering money that would be far better
spent on education or health. Consider a few facts:

. The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the
world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were
convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study.

. California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile
justice system. In contrast, it spends only $8,000 on each child
attending the troubled Oakland public school system, according to the
Urban Strategies Council.

. For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to
those in other countries. Then with the "war on drugs" and the focus
on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared.

. One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly
because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black
communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much
powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent
chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives,
according to the Sentencing Project.

Look, there's no doubt that many people in prison are cold-blooded
monsters who deserve to be there. But over all, in a time of limited
resources, we're overinvesting in prisons and underinvesting in schools.

Indeed, education spending may reduce the need for incarceration. The
evidence on this isn't conclusive, but it's noteworthy that graduates
of the Perry Preschool program in Michigan, an intensive effort for
disadvantaged children in the 1960s, were some 40 percent less likely
to be arrested than those in a control group.

Above all, it's time for a rethink of our drug policy. The point is
not to surrender to narcotics, but to learn from our approach to both
tobacco and alcohol. Over time, we have developed public health
strategies that have been quite successful in reducing the harm from
smoking and drinking.

If we want to try a public health approach to drugs, we could learn
from Portugal. In 2001, it decriminalized the possession of all drugs
for personal use. Ordinary drug users can still be required to
participate in a treatment program, but they are no longer dispatched to jail.

"Decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in
Portugal," notes a report this year from the Cato Institute. It notes
that drug use appears to be lower in Portugal than in most other
European countries, and that Portuguese public opinion is strongly
behind this approach.

A new United Nations study, World Drug Report 2009, commends the
Portuguese experiment and urges countries to continue to pursue
traffickers while largely avoiding imprisoning users. Instead, it
suggests that users, particularly addicts, should get treatment.

Senator Webb has introduced legislation that would create a national
commission to investigate criminal justice issues -- for such a
commission may be the best way to depoliticize the issue and give
feckless politicians the cover they need to institute changes.

"There are only two possibilities here," Mr. Webb said in introducing
his bill, noting that America imprisons so many more people than
other countries. "Either we have the most evil people on earth living
in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in
terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice."

Opponents of universal health care and early childhood education say
we can't afford them. Granted, deficits are a real constraint and we
can't do everything, and prison reform won't come near to fully
financing health care reform. Still, would we rather use scarce
resources to educate children and heal the sick, or to imprison
people because they used drugs or stole a pair of socks?