Prison_System_And_The_War_On_Drugs

Prison System And The War On Drugs The highest prison population in the world can be found in the United States. This has been an on going problem in our country for quite some time. The national prison population has risen nearly 500 percent since 1972, far greater than the 28 percent rise in the national population during this time. This shows that the scale of imprisonment has come a long way since the birth of the institution (Mauer, 1999). Many aspects of the system have undergone tremendous changes, but still there are many factors, which seem to influence the traumatic increase in population. One important factor can be the imposition of harsher laws such as the “three-strikes and your out law.” Also, judges have become less lenient for women offenders as well as juveniles. This only adds to the large population that already exists within our prisons. When crime is looked out we can find that most crime occurs due to economical obstacles, minority discrimination, and more importantly the break out of various illegal/legal drugs. Throughout this paper I will examine the prison system from the past to the present, the demographics of the prison population, and the impact of drug, prison, drugs, crime, state, incarceration, population, offenders, inmates, time, states, rates, blacks, black, rate, system, prisoners, one, men, criminal, 1997, people, likely, abuse, mauer, federal, whites, white, marijuana, justice, treatment, times, racial, punishment, prisons