Written by Alex Ellis
According to a 2012 U.S. Department of Justice report, between the years of 2000 and 2010, the prison population of Utah increased by about 4 percent. While that may seem like a small number, it is one of the largest increases in the nation. Many in the state have undoubtedly felt the effects, but in Salt Lake, a heated debate has been raging about prisons and their prisoners. Due to a mix of an ever-growing prison population and the threat to the property values of some Utah state officials, a proposal has been made to relocate the Utah State Prison currently located at Point of the Mountain in Draper. While the proposal has thrown the city into controversy, one interesting idea has come out of the dialogue: giving non-violent offenders fines and rehabilitation instead of time in prison, an idea proposed during the recent 2015 Utah Legislature by Kearns Republican Rep. Eric Hutchings and Layton Republican Sen. Stuart Adams.
Such an idea may seem like common sense, but for legislators it seems to only have come in a time of crisis. However, some would argue that as far as prisons and the laws concerning them go, the United States as a whole is in crisis.
The “war on drugs”—which began in 1971—has been extremely costly both in U.S. money and lives. According to Drugpolicy.org, total expenses waging the war are estimated to be an average of about $51 billion, and since only 2006 there have been over 100,000 deaths caused by the war on drugs. Add to that a prison population crisis that has Utah legislators considering such “drastic” measures, and its easy to see the size of the problem the U.S. faces today.
Conservatives might argue that becoming more lenient towards criminals would only worsen the problem, but these views are not backed by reality. For evidence, one only has to look outside the U.S.
Faced with their own drug problem, Portugal took an extreme step in 2001: decriminalizing the use and possession of any drug. To the surprise of social conservatives, this policy has produced some very positive results. Five years after the change, the number of drug overdoses fell from 400 to 290 per year, and the number of new HIV cases every year caused by sharing needles dropped from 1,400 to a mere 400. This experiment in social policy has given a clear result; it is more effective to fight drug use through rehabilitation than it is through punishment.
As most people who live in Utah know, it is not often when the legislators and state officials are struck with good sense. Given this, it is not surprising to know that such a promising and time-proven policy did not come to their minds until they were faced with a problem that could not be ignored. However, it should be remembered that good things do not last unless you take care of them. Given the option of building more prisons at the expense of taxpayers, it is likely that state leaders would choose to continue incarcerating nonviolent offenders at a massive rate. This is why it is so important that we urge our elected representatives to make the right choices for our society: to punish those who hurt others, and help those who need help.
