The Hill News

Six billion dollars. That is what the federal government spends each year on its prison population.
 
The 6 billion dollar figure represents a 1,700 percent increase in spending since just 1980. Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen an increase from 24,000 people incarcerated to 210,000 today.  We now have the highest documented incarceration rate in the world.  But are we safer?  Do the “benefits” outweigh the cost?
 
Not if you consider that the most significant source of this explosion in prison populationâ€"and the accompanying cost to taxpayersâ€"is not from putting away violent criminals. Instead, we’re too often putting low-level, nonviolent offenders behind bars â€" most of them drug offenders.
 

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