War on Drugs and Incarceration

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

This is one of the shames of our country. We have agreed to privatizing prisons and then states have signed contracts with the private groups to keep their facilities at 90% capacity. That puts pressure on law enforcement and judges to continue to round up and lock up the minor drug sellers rather than concentrating on getting to those who are at the top. I have a friend in law enforcement who says he could round up minor dealers every night only to have someone else take their place the next day. If we don't concentrate on breaking the back of the drug trade from the top, we will continue to pay ridiculous amounts to keep the minor players in jail. We need some high level arrests, not a continuing dragnet for the perimeter of the pool.

[Sandy]

From what I've read, imprisonment doesn't stop the drug use. Drugs get into prisons fairly easily, perhaps even more so than outside. It was a huge problem in South Texas, around the prison farms where prisoners were out in fields during the day. The drug dealers would bury the packages in the field at night and mark them for their dealers inside to pick up and sell inside.

My biggest fear is that the kind of war over turf that has paralyzed cities in Mexico like Juarez will spread to the US, which is where the money is coming from after all.

[KeithE]

Amens to both Dave and Sandy.

[James]

I read some years ago {can't give a source} that in the last year narcotics were legal, 3% of the US population were addicts. Today's addiction rate is about 3%. Lets decriminalize all drugs and save everyone a lot of grief.