“On Wednesday, the National Research Council published a 464-page report, two years in the making, that looks at the stunning four-decade rise of incarceration in the United States and concludes that all of its costs — for families, communities, state budgets and society — have simply not been worth the benefit in deterrence and crime reduction…It synthesizes years of evidence on crime trends, on causes driving the growth in prisons, and on the consequences of all this imprisonment. It argues that the U.S. should revise its current criminal justice policies — including sentencing laws and drug enforcement — to significantly cut prison rates and scale back what’s become the world’s most punitive culture.”
Upon the release of the abovementioned report, the WP’s Emily Badger gives a concise overview of our country’s unhealthy addiction to incarceration (white collar criminals notwithstanding, of course.) “The ‘war on drugs’…also ensured that drug crimes received more attention from police and harsher punishment in courtrooms…As a result, between 1980 and 2010, the incarceration rate for drug crimes increased tenfold.”
