Like, really fucking staggeringly expensive. Turns out locking people away for drug offenses runs up quite a tab. Who knew, right?
But if you need any more of a case that the whole thing is just a giant, hemorrhaging ouroboros, this new video infographic does a nice job putting the drug war's chattel-like prison-industrial complex into perspective. The brooding glitch may be a bit rich, yeah. But its presentation of numbers, culled from the FBI, DEA , Justice Department, and others, seems on point and never strays too far into an Alex Jones-like mish-mash of breathless hysterism.
Its most revelatory moment comes on a pass over 2009, likely the most recent year worth of solid data on the interplay between prisons, drug use and drugs busts. The federal government spent over $2 billion locking people up for drug offenses that year alone. That's about $22,000 per inmate.
One possible solution? Throw users into rehab, not the clink. The harsh reality to that? We live a world now where laundering money for the same Mexican and Central American cartels that provide America with so much of the drugs that land so many people here behind bars is basically the new cash cow for big banks--the sort that in theory could, to complete the circle, be entrusted to manage the funds of both the private prisons and rehabilitations centers that still stand to gain so much, either way.
Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thabanderson