Via Hit and Run, the Drug War Chronicle has the gory details:
More than half a million people were behind bars for drug offenses in the United States at the end of last year, according to numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In a report released Sunday, Prisoners in 2004, the Justice Department number-crunchers found that people sentenced for drug crimes accounted for 21% of state prisoners and 55% of all federal prisoners.
This report did not quantify the number of jail inmates doing time on drug charges in 2004, but an earlier BJS report put the percentage of jail inmates doing time for drug crime at 24.7% in 2002. Given the slow upward trend in drug prisoners as a percentage of all jail prisoners, DRCNet estimates that given a mid-year 2004 jail population of 714,000, approximately one-quarter, or 178,000 people were sitting in jail on drug charges at that time. With 178,000 drug prisoners in jail, more than 87,000 federal drug prisoners, and more than 266,000 state drug prisoners, the total number of people doing time for drugs in the United States last year exceeded 530,000.
Drug war prisoners make up only about one-fourth of an all-time high 2,268,000 people behind bars in the US, up 1.9% from 2003. But while the imprisonment juggernaut continues to roll along, there are faint signs that its growth is slowing. Last year’s 1.9% increase in prison and jail population was lower than the year before (2.0%) and lower than the 3.2% average annual growth rate for the past decade.
What are we doing???? Also via Hit and Run, this Radley Balko piece on one of those criminals:
Publicly, Paey’s prosecutors have conceded that the 25-year sentence was excessive, yet they insist that Paey himself is to blame, citing his refusal to accept a plea agreement. The chilling implication: Paey is serving prison time for drug distribution not because he’s guilty of actually distributing drugs — the state admits as much — but because he insisted on exercising his constitutionally-protected right to a jury trial.
Earlier this year, New York Times columnist John Tierney flew to Florida to interview Paey for a story that ran on July 19. Tierney’s column was sympathetic to Paey’s plight, and sharply critical of the state of Florida.
There is now strong evidence that the state of Florida and prison officials retaliated against Paey for speaking with Tierney. Two weeks after the interview, Paey was moved to a prison facility more than two hours from his wife and family. He was then moved even farther away, some 170 miles, to the Tomoka Correctional Institution near Daytona Beach. Sympathetic prison officials, other inmates, and medical staff have since told Paey he was moved away from his family because the guard who sat in on his interview with Tierney had complained to prison authorities about what Paey had revealed to the journalist.
At about the same time, prison medical staff told Paey that the state of Florida had refused to give permission for them to refill his morphine pump. For Paey, this information was the equivalent of a death sentence. The state of Florida left him to agonize for weeks before finally authorizing the refill, the day before his pump was scheduled to run dry. Here again, Paey has since been given strong reason to believe that the threat to withhold his medication was in retaliation for relaying his story to the New York Times.
Sick.
Jack Roy
You said it. Ugh.
Patrick
Yeah, and your government is trying to export that sickening behaviour to Canada. Thanks a bunch.
“The DEA had reached across the border into Canada, exerting heavy pressure on that country’s federal law enforcement, and were going to drag them all to a hellish federal prison in the United States. Possibly for life.
The conflicting attitudes regarding pot could not be framed in more stark terms: Canada, no charges; U.S., 10 years to life. Canadian response to the arrest has turned the spotlight back on the U.S. federal government’s ruthless prosecution of marijuana users and activists. It also mirrors the conflict between the feds and the various states, like California, which have legalized pot for medical use. ”
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/25934/
srv
More reasons to keep voting Republican. Someone has to protect the children.
jg
I wouldn’t mind going to war with at least one neighbor. The guy across the street is an idiot.
Johnny
interesting that the Balko piece appears on NRO. Does that signify that some of the Neo-com community are becoming weak in their support for the drug war? It was the worshipped Reagan who started the damn drug war after all (and all politicians have supported it, both Demo and Repub)
interesting. Will they be running a Bill Bennet article to refute the piece? Hmmmm….
ppGaz
Well …
“We are winning the war on drugs”
— Pres. Richard Nixon
Stormy70
The Drug War is stupid. Who cares if people like to toke up on occasion?! Government should not be in the drug business.
rs
isn’t William Buckley a proponent of legalization?
ppGaz
Yes, a very outspoken one.
rs
the “worshipped” Reagan launched the present war on drugs(mainly weed)in 1982 in response to conservative parents groups who became alarmed at the near decriminalization of marijuana in the 70’s(it was omnipresent back then).The first shots were actually fired in the early 20th century as a response to Mexican immigration and escalated in the 1930’s by Harry Anslinger(head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics).
Pug
The drug war contributes to the large prison population in another way. All parolees are tested for drug use now and a positive test for marijuana will get you a parole violation and a return ticket to prison.
Now, it is the fault of the guy that knows he’s going to be tested and still tests positive, but that is the main reason parolees are now returned to prison at a rate of about 70% compared to about 30% in the 1970’s before drug testing. Of the 70% that are returned to prison, about 30% are returned with a new charge. The rest are returned for parole violation.
TJIT
srv
you said
“More reasons to keep voting Republican. Someone has to protect the children.”
I assume you were being sarcastic and oppose the drug war. In that case you should know that the democrats have been as bad on the drug war as the republicans.
metalgrid
Democrats have been worse due to their fear of being percieved as ‘soft on crime/drugs’. As I’ve mentioned before, until you stop voting for the lesser evil and vote for something good, you’re just gonna get more of the same.
Off Colfax
All I can say is this.
25 god-damn years?!? For “excessive” pain medication?!? When there are serial child molesters, rapists, and multiple-count murderers that only go from 5 to 20?
There is something seriously wrong with the judicial calculus on this one.
Marcos
Drugs are bad mmmkay. So don’t to drugs. Mmmmkay. Cuz they’re bad…mmmkay.
Just say no…to insane government policies.
Patrick
Keeping drugs illegal is big business. Both for government and organized crime. Both of which are pretty hard to tell apart these days.
And as usual, the american population just takes it on the chin and keeps believing that their country is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
don surber
I’m curious if DUI causing death is considered a drug crime. Three DUIs is a felony in West Virginia.
To the point in main: In the 1960s we tried rehab and all that psychobabble. It led to a crime wave the likes of which we had not seen in the century since Reconstruction (talk about your insurgencies).
The crackdown in the 1990s has pushed the crime rate to its lowest in 40 years.
You all can get your underpants knotted worrying about the 450 or so people per 100,000 people who are behind bars. On behalf of most of the 99,550 who ain’t: We’re safer
don surber
DUI is not considered a drug offense. Review of the report shows it is in a different category
Kimmitt
Repeat after me, kids: Sic hoc ergo prompter hoc.
mil0
gee, i’m so glad we won the war on real crime years ago, so now the only thing left for our law enforcement agencies to do is throw people in jail for having a toke.
the “war on drugs” is a sick joke that is tearing apart this country. whenever i daydream about leaving this place for good, it’s always because of the obscene and misguided drug laws in this country. every city should take a page from Boulder, CO, and Seattle, WA, and a few others – they’ve passed ordinances that make marijuana the lowest priority for law enforcement. in Boulder, you’re far more likely to get a ticket for jaywalking than you are to get even a glance from a cop for smoking a joint.
mil0
also, Kimmitt: we don’t speak no namby-pamby french round here.
Patrick
mil0, that definitely wasn’t french. T’was some namby-pamby latin I think. Still don’t know what he meant though.