The Prison Industrial Complex
America or Nazi Germany?
America should be storming Washington D.C. with tar
and pitchforks over this stupid *****.
American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion
dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That’s
according to statistics released last week by the U.S.
Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.
According to the new BJS report, “Drug Use and Dependence,
State and Federal Prisoners, 2004,” 12.7 percent of state
inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for
drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses.
Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of
Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal
drug prisoners (BJS October 2005 Bulletin: “Prisoners in
2004” – NCJ 210677) suggests that there are now about 33,655
state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for
marijuana offenses. (The report failed to include estimates
on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county jails
for pot-related offenses.)
Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data
(BJS June 2004 Bulletin: “State Prison Expenditures, 2001” –
NCJ 202949) reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1
billion annually to imprison pot offenders.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/armentano-p/armentano-p12.htm
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