The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that in 2001, 2.1 million Americans were incarcerated by federal, state, or local authorities, and an additional 4.5 million were on probation or parole. According to the BJS, the U.S. prison population grew an average of 3.6 percent per year between 1995 and 2001. In order to house all those new inmates, federal and state governments built more prisons and the United States experienced a prison boom during the 1990s. According to some criminal justice experts, prisons are failing in their mission to rehabilitate inmates in preparation for their release back into society. Small-time drug offenders are sentenced to prison instead of receiving treatment for their addiction; thus it is no surprise, these experts maintain, that when the small-timers are released, they go back to drugs and crime to support their habit.

Proponents of “get tough on crime&rdquo...