Essay On Incarceration

As a result of the war on drugs, our prison population and overall cost of incarceration has increased exponentially. Nancy Reagan, former first lady and widow of President Ronald Reagan, advocated for the “Just Say No Campaign”, treating drug use as a criminal offense rather than a health issue. After Richard Nixon officially launched the drug war in 1971, the amount of incarcerated within the United States multiplied from “50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997” (A Brief History of the Drug War). People began to become full time prisoners due to small criminal offenses, such as possession of a small quantity of drugs. The exponential growth of the amount of inmates also means and exponential growth in the amount of money being spent on prisons amongst other programs. The cost of incarceration is, “up to at least $51 billion per year. Over four decades... American taxpayers have dished out $1 trillion on the drug war,” states the Huffington Post (Sledge, ). The money spent to keep non-violent offenders are costing taxpayers at time when the country is $19 trillion in debt. When it comes to the drug war, cutting corrections not

A large amount of money would be saved, having less money focusing on organized crime and law enforcement. As of 2013, in Obama’s administration, “he requested $25.6 billion in federal spending on the drug war. Of that, $15 billion would go to law enforcement, interdiction and international efforts” (Sledge, Apr. 2013, 1). Additionally, users supporting their drug habit will no longer turn to crimes, such as robbery and burglary, as a means of obtaining money. As people begin to obtain their drugs from legal sources, black market suppliers - gangs, foreign cartels, organized criminals - will fade