Incarceration numbers

I meant to blog about this the other day. More than 1 in a 100 American adults are behind bars in this country. Doesn't that just boggle the mind? The numbers for non-whites is even worse--1 in 36 Hispanic adults, 1 in 15 black adults and 1 in 9 black adults between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars. States spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. We are doing something wrong. Yes, violent criminals need to be incarcerated. The problem is incarcerating nonviolent criminals for lengthy jail terms. We can blame the war on drugs for a large part of this increase. We pride ourselves on being a role model for other countries. We need to take a long hard look at the number of people we lock up before we tell other countries how to handle their justice system...