ion and treatment in order to build more prisons. Is this planning for our children’s future?Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constitute the largest group of Federal inmates (58%) in 1998, up from 53% in 1990 (table 21). On September 30, 1998, the date of the latest available data, Federal prisons held 63,011 sentenced drug offenders, compared to 30,470 at yearend 1990.” Table 21 notes there were 56,989 Federal prisoners in 1990, compared to 108,925 in 1998. : Over 80% of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 were due to drug convictions. In 1998, drug law violators comprised 21% of all adults serving time in State prisons - 236,800 out of 1,141,700 State inmates. Nonviolent offenders accounted for Eighty-four percent (84%) of the increase in state and federal prison admissions since 1980. Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced for a second time for committing a violent offense. Whatever else it reflects, this pattern highlights the possibility that prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them. It seems that no matter how hard the government tries to fight drugs, it will always lose. Government’s solution is spending more money, imprison more people but that does not keep people from using drugs. In this final part of the paper, I will discuss legalization and decriminalization to effectively end the War on Drugs.“Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”—Abraham Lincoln December, 1840 As the drug war hysteria begins to subside, it becomes increasingly obvious that there must be a serious re-examination of the laws prohibiting R...
