[Courtesy of MPP]Â
Our nation is currently incarcerating a record one in 99 adults, according to a new report by the Pew Center on the States. You can read The New York Times' article on the U.S. governmentâs war on the American people here.
This horrifying statistic was calculated by adding the number of people in federal and state prisons (almost 1,600,000) to the number of people in local jails (723,000). With American adults numbering about 230,000,000, the report concluded that one in 99 adults is currently behind bars.
This is madness. As previous studies have found, our nation imposes harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses than for many violent crimes, creating a steady, unconscionable increase in the prison population. Visit www.mpp.org/victims to read stories of nonviolent marijuana prisoners.
The Pew report points to the urgent need to tax and regulate marijuana, as fully 3% of our nationâs 2,323,000 prisoners are incarcerated because of marijuana offenses. Indeed, Pewâs recommendations included diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison.
The report also highlights how the U.S. criminal justice system inordinately penalizes people who are not white. Appallingly, one in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, as are one in 15 black adults, not to mention one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. And these numbers donât include people on parole or probation, which means even more than one in nine black men aged 20 to 34 is caught up in the criminal justice system.
Who are our nationâs drug laws helping by locking up so many young black men â or by forcing so many adults into jails and prisons? True drug addicts? Nonviolent drug offenders? Their families?
If you're as outraged by these statistics as I am, please turn your anger into action by helping MPP restore some sense to our nation's laws by ending marijuana prohibition: Become a monthly pledger today.
MPP is the largest organization focused solely on releasing from jail/prison the 3% of inmates who are marijuana offenders. In 1995, we helped to reduce the federal sentencing guidelines for marijuana cultivation, resulting in the release of hundreds of federal prisoners. Every time we pass a medical marijuana law â as we did in Maryland, Vermont, Montana, and Rhode Island, and as we hope to do in Michigan this November â we protect seriously ill marijuana users from jail. Weâre assisting a campaign in Massachusetts to decriminalize marijuana via a ballot initiative in November, which would end the arrest of marijuana users (and therefore 6% of all arrests) in the state. And weâre supporting bills that are currently moving in Vermont and New Hampshire that would eliminate the threat of jail for marijuana possession.
We face a long battle in rolling back the entrenched tradition of using incarceration as the solution to our nationâs woes. Please join MPP for the long haul by signing up for our monthly pledge program today.
Thank you for standing with us in this worthy fight.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that your monthly pledge will be doubled.