Do we really want to waste 1 in 32 Americans

That's the proportion of Americans who were in prison, on probation, or on parole at the end of 2005.

One in every 32 Americans. That's like one kid from your kid's class.

And the growth isn't among young black males, it's among women; and much of the growth is for drug offenses:

Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.

"Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."

From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.

The "meth effect" is indicated here:

Certain states saw more significant changes in prison population. In South Dakota, the number of inmates increased 11 percent over the past year, more than any other state. Montana and Kentucky were next in line with increases of 10.4 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.

While David Brooks is talking about single mothers and broken homes, what is this country doing locking up this large a percentage of its citizenry for drug offenses? Given that the so-called war on drugs has been going on now for over a generation, and we still have seven million people in the justice system, isn't it time to try something else?

There will always be people trying to alter their consciousness, but I am convinced that if you have a society that offers people real opportunity for a life with long-lasting pleasures that go beyond big-screen TVs, fewer of them will seek solace for a shrinking job base, hypocritical Christianists, politicians who care about corporations more than people, and dysfunctional families by abusing drugs.