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Alabama suffers crime because of drugs, it punishes people because of drugs, it builds billion dollar prisons and signs billion dollar prison healthcare deals because its justice system is overrun by the consequences of drugs. It forces people to spend lifetimes in prison because of drugs, it uses the presence of drugs as an excuse to put addicts back inside, and if it put a fraction of the effort into rehabilitation it would save more people, more money and more families.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Prison Policy Initiative last week issued a national report about this very topic, saying cops, lawmakers, even family members worried about the addictions of their loved ones, often believe a stint in jail might be the thing that saves their sons or daughters or fathers or mothers.
The inability to pay drug debts leads to beatings, kidnappings, stabbings, sexual abuse, and homicides.”
People are attacked, like a Bibb Correctional Facility prisoner cited by the feds, who was stabbed as he was sleeping, over and over again, by a man who said the victim owed him money for drugs, so he “got it in blood.”
Like a man at Draper prison, also cited by DOJ, who blacked out on meth, and realized only after he woke up that he had been raped.
But few things come at a cost as substantial as a stint in Alabama prisons, where paroles have been nearly stopped, where violence is a constant, where lives are destroyed and redemption denied.
This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.
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