There are more than 1.8 million Americans currently in jail or prison. As of June 1996, 5.5 million Americans were under some form of control by the justice system. This translates into 1 out of every 35 adults in the nation. The drug war has failed to protect adolescents from drugs. Since 1991, twice as many eighth graders report using heroin and three times as many report using crack.
Surveys find that it is easier for youth to buy marijuana than beer.
Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars on arresting drug users and sellers, on criminal prosecutions, and on building jails and prisons to incarcerate millions of Americans, it would be difficult to find one drug-free high school and very few middle schools in New Mexico or our country. And while incarcerating record number of Americans for extremely long periods of time pursuant to mandatory minimum sentencing, we have created a generation of orphans. It is estimated that 2.4 million children in America have one or both parents in jail or prison. There are 130,000 American women in jail or prison. Seventy-five percent of the women in New Mexico's prisons have children.