The following statistics are from www.drugwarfacts.org:

"Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constitute the largest group of Federal inmates (57%) in 2000, up from 53% in 1990 (table 20). On September 30, 2000, the date of the latest available data in the Federal Justice Statistics Program, Federal prisons held 73,389 sentenced drug offenders, compared to 30,470 at yearend 1990."

Comment:  It is said that it costs approximately $25,000 per year per inmate.  My daughter is incarcerated for 74 months - 6 years, 2 months.  Simple math means that $150,000 to $175,000 will be expended to house this non-violent offender who was attempting to sell $4000 worth of LSD. 

Where's the cost/benefit ratio here?  If you had to pull that amount of money out of your pocket for the next 7 years, how long would you continue to do so without objecting?  The fact it's spread out among 280 million Americans doesn't make it OK., does it?

"The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 700 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (665), the Cayman Islands (600), Belarus (555), the US Virgin Islands (550), Kazakhstan (520), Turkmenistan (490), the Bahamas (480), Belize (460), and Bermuda (445). "However, almost two thirds of countries (63%) have rates of 150 per 100,000 or below. (The United Kingdom's rate of 125 per 100,000 of the national population places it at about the mid-point in the World List. Among European Union countries its rate is the second highest, after Portugal's 130.)"

No wonder with our draconian drug laws.

The U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.
Source: John Irwin, Ph. D., Vincent Schiraldi, and Jason Ziedenberg, America's One Million Nonviolent Prisoners (Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 1999), pg. 4.

According to the US Justice Department, between 1990 and 2000 "Overall, the percentage of violent Federal inmates declined from 17% to 10%. While the number of offenders in each major offense category increased, the number incarcerated for a drug offense accounted for the largest percentage of the total growth (59%), followed by public-order offenders (32%)."

Assuming recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, an estimated 1 of every 20 Americans (5%) can be expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime.

Another statistic mentioned at FedCURE.org :

"The number of people being incarcerated at state and federal facilities continues to grow at an alarming rate. The most recent official estimate of persons in correctional custody (DOJ Statistics, 2001), serving time in jail, prison, or on probation or parole, is 6.47 million with 3.8 million on probation, and 725,527 on parole."

From Behind Bars: Surviving Prison by Jeffrey Ian Ross and Stephen Richards, ISBN 0-02-0864351-8

This means it will be coming to YOUR home soon!

The next one is really scary to me (click here)