Lawson for Congress

Americans consider our country one of the freest on earth, yet national incarceration rates beg to differ. More than half of all federal prisoners are not murderers, rapists or even thieves; they are people who have forcibly hurt no one except themselves. More than half of all federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders.

America now has the highest prison population in the world in terms of both percentage of the population and overall prisoners with one in every one hundred Americans imprisoned. Furthermore Hispanics and Blacks are unequally affected, as the New York Times reports:

One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

In a time of economic stagnation and resource-driven inflation why are we spending so much on imprisoning these non-violent offenders? The New York Times elaborates on this point, writing:

It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

$23,876 is quite a large sum. Money that could go to a doctor’s salary to treat drug users rather than a guard’s salary to watch them.

Americans have long adopted an approach that is tough on crime. This toughness is laudable in some cases — with increased sentencing, violent crime has fallen by about 25 percent. Drugs have not followed this trend, however.  In many ways being tough on crime works, but shouldn’t we be more than tough?  Should we not also be smart? Since Nixon declared the federal “War on Drugs”, drug availability has remained essentially unchanged. Few would object to tough sentencing laws that keep violent criminals off the street and prevent violent crime. Should we not save incarceration for when it is a solution, however, rather than just a burden?

Whatever your opinion on the use of drugs, we should question the appropriateness of enforcing laws that are in contradiction to our nation’s highest law, the Constitution. At least with alcohol prohibition in the early 1900s, we had the intellectual honesty to recognize that federal alcohol prohibition required a Constitutional amendment. Today, however, we tolerate unconstitutional expansion of government power.

In one such excess, Gonzales v. Raich (2005), Federal authorities were affirmed in their efforts to criminalize the local, intrastate cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana.  Not only does this imprison people who sought to relieve the suffering of the sick, but as Clarence Thomas writes:

If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States. This makes a mockery of Madison’s assurance to the people of New York that the “powers delegated” to the Federal Government are “few and defined,” while those of the States are “numerous and indefinite.” The Federalist No. 45, at 313 (J. Madison).

The federal drug war must be rethought, and we must adopt a rational drug policy that not only pays attention to social mores but also respects empirical evidence and, most importantly, obeys our Constitution.

William Griffin is a rising Junior studying Political Science and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a policy intern with Lawson for Congress.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 1:37 pm and is filed under drug prohibition, good government, healthcare freedom, restore liberty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.