According to a 1998 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are more than 1.7 million people behind bars in America. To keep up with the rapidly rising prison population, state and federal governments have embarked on a prison-building spree of unprecedented proportions, committing close to $120 billion dollars to convict and house criminals. Despite the dramatic increase in prison building, however, American prisons remain dangerously overcrowded.

According to many experts, America’s overflowing prisons are symptomatic of a failed corrections system. Monsignor William B. O’Brien, president and cofounder of the Daytop Village drug treatment program, contends that a large percentage of the inmates clogging the prison system are nonviolent drug offenders that pose relatively little threat to society. O’Brien maintains that sending drug addicts to prison is ultimately counterproductive. “For . . . years we’ve been filling our prisons with...