When will the U.S. stop mass incarceration?
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period. Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education. As I protest education cuts, I’m so often told, “We just don’t have the money.” It’s a lie. We do have the money. We just choose to spend it on prisons. Why is this not a front and center issue in the presidential campaign? Largely casualties of our misguided “war on drugs,” and vigorously promoted at the federal level by the “drug czar” and a $15 billion annual budget, the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980.
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by Lisa Bloom, CNN.