The appalling U.S. incarceration rate has been a frequent topic on this blog, so this Veronique de Rugy/Reason.com piece on the troubling numbers involved in the U.S. prison systems caught my eye:

In 2009, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,524,513 prisoners in state and federal prisons. When local jails are included, the total climbs to 2,284,913. These numbers are not just staggering; they are far above those of any other liberal democracy in both absolute and per capita terms. The International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London calculates that the United States has an incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 people, compared to 325 in Israel, 217 in Poland, 154 in England and Wales, 96 in France, 71 in Denmark, and 32 in India.

Incredibly, de Rugy reports that research indicates that approximate 60 per cent of those prisoners are non-violent offenders (i.e., mostly possession of illegal drug defendants). What is one of direct costs of the drug prohibition policy?:

[S]tate correctional spending has quadrupled in nominal terms in the last two decades and now totals $52 billion a year, consuming one out of 14 general fund dollars. Spending on corrections is the second fastest growth area of state budgets, following Medicaid. According to a 2009 report from the Pew Center on the States, keeping an inmate locked up costs an average of $78.95 per day, more than 20 times the cost of a day on probation.

And, as de Rugy goes on to point out, these direct costs don’t even approach the indirect costs of locking up non-violent offenders with hardened criminals and leaving the children of non-violent criminals without the support of a parent during the prison sentence.

A truly civilized society would find a better way.