US Has 330,000 Drug Offenders in Prison

The number of people in prison in America declined last year for the second year in a row, according to a new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number of prisoners at the end of 2011 dropped to just under 1.6 million, a 0.9% decrease over the previous year.

Of those 1.6 million prisoners, some 330,000 were doing time for drug offenses, including nearly 95,000 doing federal time.

There were 15,023 fewer inmates at the end of 2011 than a year earlier, but that number is more than accounted for by a single state, California, which reported a decline of 15,493 prisoners due primarily to an incarceration realignment program that has sent what would have been state prisoners to county jails instead. Counting just state prison populations, 2011 saw a decline of 21,164 prisoners, or 1.5%, again with California accounting for 72% of the decrease.

Overall, 26 states reported declines in prison populations, while 24 reported increases. While overall state prison population numbers are declining slightly, the federal prison population continues to increase, largely offsetting the decline in the states. The federal prison population increased by 6,591 prisoners, or 3.1%.

More than 330,000 were doing prison time for drugs in the US at the end of 2011. (supremecourt.gov)

The growth in the federal prison population is largely driven by drug war prisoners. Drug offenders constitute 48% of all federal inmates, or some 94,600 inmates. By contrast, only 7.6% of federal inmates are doing time for violent crimes.

Among state prisoners, drug offenders accounted for 17%, or slightly fewer than one out of five. That means some 235,000 were doing state prison time on drug charges at the end of 2011, bringing the combined state and federal total to 330,000. That’s a slight decline over a decade ago, but still represents incalculable human costs, as well as easily calculable financial ones.

by Phillip Smith

Via @ StopThe DrugWar.org

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Waiting List for Addiction Treatment in Federal Prisons Is 51,000 Inmates Long

Addicted prisoners are waiting years for therapy; The Feds have more money than states….if this is the situation in Fed Pens,  think about state prisons…..

The Fix / By Seth Ferranti

Federal prisons are full of drug offenders—more than 90,000 of them, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO)  report released this week. Yet only about a third of those prisoners— most of them low-level drug dealers, users and addicts—are receiving treatment to combat their addictions. “Its really tragic,” one longtime federal prisoner tells  The Fix . “The feds lock up all these crackheads and junkies and then don’t even give them any programs to get them off drugs. Worse still, the one drug program they do have,  RDAP, has all types of restrictions on who can get in, for what crime, etc. If you don’t fit the specific criteria, you can’t get in.”

The waiting list for the Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug Abuse Program, which allows successful participants to get up to a year off their sentences, is long— 51,000 inmates long, according to the GAO report. “I have been in prison 15 years, waiting to get into the drug program,” another prisoner tells us. “What they do is they run you right to the door. Like I wasn’t even eligible to sign up until I was 36 months short [of release]. Now I have been on the RDAP unit for seven months and I’m  still not in the program. They wait until you are 28 months short or less till they put you in. Then it takes nine months or so for the program and you get 12 months off and six months’ halfway house—that’s how it’s supposed to work. But if I don’t get in by next month the clock is ticking on my 12 months off.”

Bureau of Prisons policies, and the way they’re carried out, mean that drug addicts serving long sentences don’t get treatment until right before they go home—despite the  wide availability  of drugs inside. “I’ve been doing drugs for 15 years in prison,” the second prisoner says. “And now I have to get clean so I can complete the program and go home. It’s not easy: I’m a drug addict.” Prisoners who relapse or violate any prison rule or regulation are  kicked out  of RDAP. But usually these prisoners are the ones that need the program the most. Instead of helping long-term prisoners get treatment early, the BOP supports a system that enables drug use and only entices prisoners to quit much later. “Of course I want the year off,” says the addicted prisoner. “Of course I want to go home. But I wish I didn’t have to wait so long to get the treatment I need, so that I can go out and live a drug- and crime-free life and not come back to prison.”

 

Seth Ferranti is serving 25 years for drug trafficking. This is his first column for The Fix. To learn more about prisoners who are working hard at a commutation, check out straight-a-guide.com. for more of Ferranti’s writings, go to gorillaconvict.com.

 

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• Prisoners face long wait for drug-rehab services (usatoday.com)
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