| atbell |
So I was reading away and saw this article about Frezno CA. From the sounds of it they are about to release 500 prisoners because they simply can't afford to keep them locked up any more.
Then I though, 'how much could the US save if it just let all of the people convicted for pot out of jail?'
So I did some looking, here:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf
Then I did some guess work and assumed:
A prisoner costs 10,000 US$ per year to keep.
About 1/2 of the people charged with drugs are there for pot.
Conservative estimates to say the least.
Then I did some math and it turns out that:
Using these two assumptions the US spent a massive 1.61 BN US$ on pot prisoners in 2008.
In total the country has spent 13.485 BN US$ keeping people locked up for pot since 2000.
This means that part of the reason the US is in such massive debt is because of the people who are in jail because of pot. The country is borrowing to keep pot heads locked up.
put that in your pipe and smoke it! |
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