Pubdate: Tue, 25 Oct 2005
Source: Herald-Mail, The (Hagerstown, MD)
Copyright: 2005 The Herald-Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.herald-mail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1537
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

RETHINKING THE WAR ON DRUGS

Crime has apparently become an equal-opportunity activity, according
to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The report, released Sunday to the Associated Press, says that women
are now 7 percent of the inmate population in state and federal
prisons. More telling, women now account for one in every four arrests.

In West Virginia, the total prison population grew by 6.6 percent in
2004, from 4,715 to 5,206. With average annual costs for incarcerating
one inmate topping $20,000, that's a trend to watch.

Just recently West Virginia opened the Martinsburg Correctional
Center, which will function as a temporary home for up to 120 men
convicted of felony charges.

During their stay there, officials will determine whether the offender
should do his time at a minimum-, medium-or maximum-security
facility. It will require a staff of 73, most or whom will be
correctional officers.

All of this growth in the correctional system is part of a trend the
study's authors say began in the 1990s, when lawmakers added mandatory
minimum sentences for illegal drug users.

A spokesman for The Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to
prison, said that the number of drug offenders incarcerated nationwide
has jumped from 40,000 in 1980 to 450,000 today.

Another group, the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute,
noted that the number of inmates as grown even as the nation's crime
rate dropped.

What isn't clear is whether the crime rate has dropped because more
drug offenders were incarcerated or whether there's no correlation
between the two.

For the last 25 years, the war on drugs has been fought with
increasingly tough sentences, yet the trade shows no signs of drying
up. The Bureau of Justice report says the growing number of women
being incarcerated is due in large part to their involvement in
drug-related offenses. It's time to look at the tactics in this war
and consider whether some different weapons are needed.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake