05 Nov 2014
Director: Eugene Jarecki
UK
2012
108 min
Eugene Jarecki launches an angry and personal attack, from the libertarian left, on America’s war on drugs. Jarecki’s contention is that this is a grotesquely wasteful public-works scheme creating paid activity for the police, the judiciary and the construction companies building prisons by packing poor blacks and whites off to jail. Successive US presidents have realised that spending tax dollars on education and rehabilitation goes down badly with the press so the police step up their arrest rate by impounding the easiest targets such as petty drug users. With daunting new mandatory minimum sentences and three-strike rules, America has created a new onshore Devil’s Island in each city for its despairing underclass.