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Your Call

Your Call: What’s the legacy of the drug war?

On today's Your Call, we’ll revisit Rose Aguilar’s conversation with Eugene Jarecki, filmmaker behind the documentary, The House I Live In, which “captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs.”  The drug war has lasted 40 years, cost 1 trillion dollars, and led to over 45 million arrests.  But what has it accomplished?  Join the conversation on the next Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guest:

Eugene Jarecki, writer and director of The House I Live In, a documentary film about the history and impact of the war on drugs in the United States

Resources:

The House I Live In

DRUG WAR STATISTICS (from the film’s website)

• Over the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has cost more than $1 trillion and accounted for more than 45 million arrests.

• In 2009 nearly 1.7 million people were arrested in the U.S. for nonviolent drug charges – more than half of those arrests were for marijuana possession alone. Less than 20% was for the sale or manufacture of a drug.

• Even though White and Black people use drugs at approximately equal rates, Black people are 10.1 times more likely to be sent to prison for drug offenses. Today, Black Americans represent 56% of those incarcerated for drug crimes, even though they comprise only 13% of the U.S. population.

• In a 2010 survey, 8.9% of Americans over the age of 12 had used illicit drugs in the past month.

• Today, there are more people behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses than were incarcerated for all crimes, violent or otherwise, in 1970. To return to the nation’s incarceration rates of 1970, America would have to release 4 out of every 5 currently held prisoners.

• Between 1973 and 2009, the nation’s prison population grew by 705 percent, resulting in more than 1 in 100 adults behind bars today. In 1980, the total U.S. prison and jail population was about 500,000 – today, it is more than 2.3 million.

• The U.S. incarcerates more people than any country in the world – both per capita and in terms of total people behind bars. The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet it has almost 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population.

• In 2011, every 8 state employees worked for a corrections agency.

• In 2009, it cost an average of $78.95 per day to keep an inmate locked up, more than 20 times the cost of a day on probation.