Free State Or Police State ?

Americans love to call their country the "land of the free", but considering the information in the graphic above that might well be a huge exaggeration. While the United States only has about 5% of the world's population, it houses 25% of the world's prison population. Obviously those two numbers don't paint a very pretty picture. Why is our prison population so out of whack with our general population? Why do we lead all other nations in both the total number of prisoners and the percentage of our population that is imprisoned?

There are only two possible reasons for this incongruity. Either the United States has a much larger percentage of lawbreakers than any other country, or we are imprisoning people that shouldn't be in prison (because they have hurt no one or stolen from no one). I don't believe the first reason offered is true at all. People are pretty much the same in all countries, and people in the U.S. are no better or worse than people in the rest of the world.

That means we are putting people in prison that really shouldn't be there. Our prison population wasn't always so out of line with that of the rest of the world. Back in the 50's and 60's and earlier, we didn't imprison nearly so large a percentage of our population. But then came the drug war, and we started putting people in prison for drug crimes -- and far too often they were sent to prison for simply possessing a drug. Some were imprisoned for drugs that should have been legal (like marijuana), and others for drugs that were more of a medical problem than a legal one (like cocaine or heroin). Both were unnecessary.

Now we have spent well over a trillion dollars on this ridiculous war on drugs and ballooned our prison population to a huge size -- and it has accomplished nothing at all. Drugs are as accessible now (maybe more accessible) than they were before we declared "war" on them (because we have made the drug black market highly profitable, just like the first prohibition did for alcohol). And we have done this because our misguided politicians decided some drugs should be legal (like alcohol and tobacco), while other drugs should be illegal.

The upshot of all this is that now we look far less like a truly free country and far more like the world's biggest police state. It is time to change our drug policy. Marijuana should be legalized, and harder drugs should be dealt with by education and medical treatment. And no one should be sent to prison who hasn't stolen from or hurt another person. It has never been good public policy to try and deal with social issues with the criminal law, and it never will be. Drug criminals are just America's version of political prisoners.