“Drug abuse is a health, moral, and spiritual problem; it is time to stop treating it as a criminal problem.”

—Doug Bandow, Christian Science Monitor, December 11, 2000

“For many addicted individuals, it is important to have enforcement—incarceration—attached to treatment.”

—Dick Spees, quoted in the San Francisco Recorder, November 3, 2000

The United States is often described as a punitive nation. Population growth alone cannot explain the phenomenal growth of its prison system. While the nation contains only 5 percent of the global population, its prisons now house 25 percent of the world’s inmates. On February 15, 2000, the U.S. prison population reached 2 million, according to the Justice Policy Institute, doubling in only a decade. Currently, sixteen states have lower populations than the number of people incarcerated in the nation’s correctional facilities. Many crime experts favor these high rates of incarceration...