He also said that drugs were just as available in prisons as on the street. We need a fundamental change in the way we look at them. They talked about the over 2.5 million children of the drug war prisoners, being deprived of one or both parents. They reported the tremendous cost of locking all these people up, both in direct dollars and lost productivity. The dialog continued-drug abuse is an illness, not a crime, inmates are human beings, who just need a helping hand.
Present policy is a complete waste of taxpayers money.
Califano said that a significant fraction of the federal prison population should be removed from other violent and incorrigible prisoners, effectively treated, and returned to society. Mr. Califano consistently DID NOT break out the difference between illegal drugs and alcohol in most of the charts. Contrary to conventional wisdom and popular myth, alcohol is more tightly linked with more violent crime than crack, cocaine, heroin, or any other illegal drug. The study showed that alcohol alone was seven times more responsible for violent crime than all illegal drugs combined. Marijuana was not even on the charts.