STOP THE WAR ON DRUGS!
The gang loitering ordinance in Chicago is one way the police are used tokeep thecity safe for the gentrifiers. The war on drugs has filled the prisons with young Black and Latino men and women. The ghetto and the prison are now linked as zones of social exclusion and are the common places for gangs.
This is the inside of the old building at Stateville Penitentiary. Stateville was built as a model of Bentham's Panopiticon.
More on privatization, including financial reports of private correction companies.
An overview on prison law with links.
Jerome Miller, one of the nation's foremost authorities on corrections writes about "the American Gulag"
Read more in YES! magazine's special prison issue.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Mexican Mafia (La Eme) is one of the country's major prison gangs. This site links to scholarly and other articles on them.
How much do we spend on police, the courts, and corrections?
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Direct expenditures for criminal justice by component, 1982-97
xxxxxx Police xxxxxxxxJudicialxxxxxxxxCorrections
1982 $19,022,184,000 $7,770,785,000 $9,048,947,000
1983 $20,648,200,000 $8,620,604,000 $10,411,363,000
1984 $22,685,766,000 $9,463,180,000 $11,793,744,000
1985 $24,399,355,000 $10,628,816,000 $13,534,897,000
1986 $26,254,993,000 $11,485,446,000 $15,759,366,000
1987 $28,767,553,000 $12,555,026,000 $17,548,769,000
1988 $30,960,824,000 $13,970,563,000 $20,299,155,000
1989 $32,794,182,000 $15,588,664,000 $22,566,622,000
1990 $35,923,479,000 $17,356,826,000 $26,153,654,000
1991 $38,971,240,000 $19,298,379,000 $29,297,200,000
1992 $41,326,531,000 $20,988,888,000 $31,461,433,000
1993 $44,036,756,000 $21,558,403,000 $31,946,667,000
1994 $46,004,536,000 $22,601,706,000 $34,864,322,000
1995 $48,644,529,000 $24,471,689,000 $39,752,230,000
1996 $53,007,425,000 $26,157,907,000 $41,028,843,000
1997 $57,753,530,000 $28,528,774,000 $43,511,148,000
Source: Justice Employment and Expenditure Extracts, 1982 - 97,
table 1.
T he war on drugs is the most racist domestic US policy since slavery. While our country has enjoyed unprecedented prosperity,we have been simultaneously been filling our prisons with drug offenders.
Here is some data on the 400% increase in drug prisoners since 1970 for each state--despite overall declines in drug use.
On Larry King, Attorney General John Ashcroft said: "Well, I want to escalate the war on drugs. I want to renew it, relaunch it if you will."Read what the Media Awareness Project has to say about it.
Two hundred Newspaper articles on incarceration and the war on drugs
Here are some extensive references to drug issues.
Anti-Drug War Sites
The Drug Policy Alliance
By far the best site for data on the drug war. A searchable site, with links to every source you need.
This site adds content to the movie Traffic which is helping to build the anti-war movement.
Want to know how much is being spent on the drug war this year? How many people are arrested or sent to prison. Check out this site. It is part of a larger site: DrugSense which includes a series of helpful pages on drug facts.
They also present other research from the US and the Netherlands
Is the War on Drugs a War on Blacks? Data on the disproportionate impact of the war. Links to newspaper articles on race and the war on drugs.
Human Rights Watch has issued a report condemning the war on Drugs entitled Racial Disparities and the War on Drugs.
Other Sites On Drugs
The National Drug Control Strategy. 2001 Report. Read it for yourself
Monitoring
the Future
A federally funded site reporting on annual surveys on drug use in the
US. There's lots of data here.