Jailing non-violent offenders costly to government, individuals
It’s true that America leads the world in exactly two categories: largest military and highest percentage of population in jail. The latter could owe to the U.S.’s dual sovereignty, which allows states to hold their own laws and requires citizens to also abide by federal laws.
Some states enforce laws like the three-strikes law in California, where criminals convicted of a felony after two prior convictions are put in jail for 25 years or more. It’s a seemingly good law when a sex offender or violent criminal is put away, but unfortunately, it has caught other criminals in its large net, like Leandro Andrade, who stole $153 worth of videotapes from two Kmarts. Because it was his third offense, he’s in jail for 50 years.
Yes, it is wrong to steal. But if the state is going to require compensation from the individual anyway, why not keep him out of jail while he tries to repay his debt? Why throw him in jail with countless murderers and violent offenders?
This question also easily applies to the thousands of victims of mandatory minimum sentences in our prisons across the country. Laws are beginning to err on the side of forgiveness for those who like to carry amounts of weed larger than the minimum sentencing requirements. However, taxpayer money has been feeding and clothing nonviolent drug offenders for far too long.
Yahoo News published an interview this week with an official in President Barack Obama’s administration that said, “Obama … wants to use his previously dormant pardon power as part of a larger strategy to restore fairness to the criminal-justice system.” The official also talks about how Obama could help “hundreds, perhaps thousands of people locked up for nonviolent drug crimes by the time he leaves office.”
This means that men and women — people with families and futures who also happen to enjoy partaking in what people are finally beginning to classify as a harmless recreational drug — will be able to return to their families and get on with their lives rather than being a drain on tax dollars and being forced to live with violent prisoners.
The war on drugs has drawn on for far too long. The war on drugs is a war on people, American people who have paid with their lives — some by death in the fight and some wasting away in a jail cell. These people aren’t thanked and honored like veterans; they’re marginalized or pushed aside and forgotten about.
Our last three presidents have admitted drug use (whether we choose to believe they inhaled or not). There is a page on Wikipedia that lists all of the admitted marijuana users in Congress and the Senate — about half of them — and we trust these people to represent and protect us every day.
We drained our resources trying to absolve this nation of drugs, yet we are witnessing some states generate millions of dollars by legalizing pot.
We can make money off of something inherently harmless; it could be used to help veterans suffering from PTSD or people suffering hourly seizures rather than what it has been doing: forcing nonviolent Americans into jail cells, where the rest of us are required to pay for their stay.