COSELLOUT: Still Tellin’ It Like It Is

But while our country’s leadership has been looking the other way for the last 25 years, The Sentencing Project has been keeping score. On the very day that tens of thousands descended on Jena, TSP released a new report that examines the burden of the "war on drugs" on the criminal justice system and American communities. The report - A 25-YEAR QUAGMIRE: THE WAR ON DRUGS AND ITS IMPACT ON AMERICAN SOCIETY assesses how the drug war has produced a record expansion of prison and jail systems and highlights additional indicators of the war’s impact on the criminal justice system and communities, including (directly from the report):

ARRESTS:

– Drug arrests have more than TRIPLED in the last 25 years, totaling a record 1.8 million arrests in 2005;

– 81.7% of drug arrests were for possession offenses, and 42.6% were for marijuana charges in 2005; marijuana possession arrests accounted for 79% of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s;

INCARCERATION:

– Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 11 TIMES OVER since 1980. Nearly a half-million persons are in state or federal prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980.

– Nearly 6 in 10 persons in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity;

– More News on Incarceration

– African Americans serve almost as much time in federal prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (62 months), largely due to racially disparate sentencing laws such as the 100-to-1 crack-powder cocaine disparity;

– See other full report - Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity

DECLINE IN TREATMENT:

– Only 14% of persons in 2004 who report using drugs in the month before their arrest had participated in a treatment program, a decline of more than half from participation rates in 1991;

– A shortage of treatment options in many low-income neighborhoods contributes to drug abuse being treated primarily as a criminal justice problem, rather than a social problem.

The report also provides policy recommendations that can help effectively reinvest government resources in community safety by encouraging comprehensive drug treatment and prevention strategies to address drug addiction. VIEW A 25-YEAR QUAGMIRE: THE WAR ON DRUGS AND ITS IMPACT ON AMERICAN SOCIETY