Not one person has asked for more money for jails, but the bulk of the money in the bond vote May 21 would be wasted building yet more jail space for controlled-substance violators. Most of the people sentenced to jail or prison for felonies in Multnomah County are drug offenders. The weekly tallies in The Oregonian, drawn from the county's own records, show the figure is more than 60 percent so far in 1996. A large majority of these prisoners have no record of violence, abuse, or property crimes, and are not charged with such. It's probably true that a disproportionate number of real criminals enter the judicial system as a result of their drug abuse, but real criminals aren't the ones who tend to get sentenced to hard time.
Drug offenders are.
Real criminals who abuse illegal drugs are so small a part of the larger drug-using population that targeting all drug users indiscriminately is a waste of resources that exacerbates all our problems. The Oregonian reported Sunday that Portland police are solving just one-third of all violent crimes. Given these assumptions, there are currently 24.127 substance offenders in Multnomah County for every jail cell. I think it's clear we cannot incarcerate our way out of our drug problem. What may not be clear is that putting people in jail for drugs is counterproductive.