| Study Guide for Mother Jones Special Report on Prisons "How We Got to Two Million" How did the "drug war" and politics combine to generate an unprecedented imprisonment boom? Who has a financial stake in continuing and increasing the boom? Why do the authors say that for politicians "crime pays"? "Incubating Disease" What diseases are epidemic in our overcrowded prisons? How do prisons respond to these diseases? How do these diseases often spread to the public? "Bad Investment" Does the huge financial cost of the drug war actually reduce drug use? Why does Johnson argue that drug treatment would save money and be more humane than prison? "Breeding Violence" How does prison lead to more violence and crime, not less. "Left Behind" What happens to the children of the people that we lock up for long prison terms? (Does anybody even bother to think about this??) "Liberty and Justice for Some" What does Jackson mean by "first-class jails and second-class schools"? What does the "war on drugs" do to fairness and justice in the legal sysyem? "What's the Alternative?" What alternatives do the authors recommend? INCARCERATION ATLAS Click the map to open the atlas, then scroll down and look at the tables: How much has the imprisonment rate increased? How does prison spending compare to education spending? How has the proportion of prisoners who are there for drug offenses changed? Who has the drug war targeted? From the pull-down "Select a state" menu, look at 5 -10 specific states and compare the four areas above. Are patterns similar in most states? |