Our 11th question is from Ben Tyson:
What is your opinion, or what ideas do you have, to reform this countries drug and prison population? Do you believe that current policy unfairly and disproportionally affects minority populations (hispanics, african-americans, etc.), further entrenching cycles of poverty?
Jared Polis:
Yes, our current criminal justice system unfairly and disproportionaly affects minority populations; just look at average sentencing and it is hard to dispute.
Drug addiction is a public health issue first and a criminal justice issue second. We need to have free quality treatment options in place and treat addicts with compassion.
The United States has a higher percentage of our population incarcerated than any other western nation. This is not something we should brag about. Together we can break the cycle of poverty and incarceration by bringing real hope and opportunity to every American. (see graph)
Will Shafroth:
I do believe that we need to reform our policies and sentencing guidelines around drugs. Far too many people end up in jail for far too long because of some relatively minor drug offenses. This ends up costing society huge amounts of tax dollars for incarceration that could be better spent on education and mental health care and drug prevention.
The racial distribution in our prisons – very high Hispanic and African-American – reflects that we are not doing a good enough job in our society in creating equal opportunities for all our citizens. We need to focus on improving our education system so that all of our children can graduate from high school and go on to college or land in a quality job.
Joan Fitz-Gerald:
1st this nation needs mental health parity in our health care plans. Many in our prisons have mental health issues which they have self medicated with drugs and alcohol. Lack of access to mental health help has exploded the prison population. The disparity between wealthy and poor, minorities and how they are treated in our criminal justice system has become stark and extremely disturbing. We have many prisons with no drug or alcohol treatment at all and no educational opportunities thereby assuring ourselves of recidivism rates that are extremely high especially for the poor and minorities.
