Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Other Endless War

The GR Press ran an editorial yesterday discussing how much Michigan spends on its prison system, and that maybe there might be some savings available?

The basic problem is that Michigan has a lot of people in jail - way more per-capita that the other Great Lakes states. Political pandering to the Get Tough on Crime set is mostly responsible and the solution is expensive. And never mind the miserable, heartbreaking impact on the minority community.

So how many people in the system are there for non-violent drug crimes? I don't have a statistic in front of my but I'll bet it's a lot, certainly more than 25%. The long and short of it is that Michigan can no longer afford the War On Drugs. It's been going on for 25 years and is a failure.

It's time for politicians to stop pandering and come up with a real solution to the drug problem, and maybe save some money at the same time.

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