Almost 300,000 inmates are mentally ill. The financial costs are staggering. Our states now spend more on prisons than on universities. The human costs are incalculable. Young people arrested for drugs are brutalized once in jail.
Prison becomes their university.
Its lessons are not uplifting. The US imposes the longest sentences in the industrial world, locking non-violent offenders into the prisons with the worst conditions that provide the least treatment. The offender is violated, hardened, and then released into a society with hope cut off. Not surprisingly, recidivism rates are staggeringly high. It is an expression of a foolish and failed war on drugs.