Enough Is Enough: The Need for Prison Reform in the US

The US “war on drugs” has focused mainly on stopping the supply of drugs from entering the US from other countries. As a result, the US has spent billions of dollars on initiatives such as Plan Colombia and the Merida Initiative, designed to curb drug trafficking from other countries.1 The focus on stopping the supply of drugs fails to address many of the underlying socioeconomic issues. One of the most important issues that needs to be addressed today and which is intricately related to the war on drugs is prison reform. The US continues to incarcerate millions of people—over 100,00iV’ were convicted on drug-related offenses—at an alarmingly high cost. This chapter will analyze why prison reform is so desperately needed and what the main obstacles are for reforming prisons in the US by looking at the growing incarceration rates, the cost of housing prisoners, racial disparities in sentencing, the challenges to changing the current system, and finally possible solutions and conclusions. We use the prison system in California as a case study and examine some of the alternative programs that have been implemented due to the high cost of incarceration.