Drugs and Prision

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the last few years, prisoners serving time for drug related chargers made up almost 50% of sentenced prisoners under federal jurisdiction. With the highest amount of drug related incarnations, The United States has a staggering 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse. It is without doubt that the prison population is driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses. It is often argued whether the punishment fits the crime, and often questioned if the government is wasting money on prisoners incarcerated for drug related offenses. With this in mind, I believe the punishments for drug related offenses are not harsh, and in fact with the increasing amount of drug users and drug related crimes this issue is becoming undermined. To back up my argument I will use examples from two authors who have experienced prison in two different ways. The first is Amanda Coyne, author of “The Long Good-bye”. Coyne writes about her experience visiting jail on Mother’s Day. She brings her nephew to see her older sister who is an inmate at a Women’s federal prison in Pekin, Illinois. She describes how the mother’s cherish each second spent with their children, and the appreciation is returned with gifts of flowers and candies. She then proceeds to talk about how difficult it will be to describe to these children that their mothers are forced to spend so much time in jail for seemingly minor offenses (drug chargers) while other criminals who do worse crimes get off nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Christina Boufis, author of “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” writes about her experiences working inside of a county jail where she taught writing to the women there. She often relates her inmate students to her students at the University of California at Berkeley. Her writing is often inspired by her students at jail, and along with “Teaching Literature at the County Jail” Boufis also wrote “A Teacher behind Bars”