Who’s Using and Who’s Doing Time: Incarceration, the War on Drugs, and Public Health

Abstract

WITHOUT A PERSONAL connection, scientists, researchers, and those who set public policy rarely know the stories of those who are convicted of felony crimes and sentenced to prison: how they came to be convicted, whom they left behind, and what they went home to once released. But the consequences of their imprisonment—social, economic, political, and personal—are evidenced daily in every major city, suburban town, and rural hamlet. We aim to reframe the growth of the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs from the perspective of those incarcerated for nonviolent, drug-related crimes. By framing the issue this way, we . . .