2.3 million people behind bars - How to stop wasting lives and money

From Beyond Prisons - Summer 2011 issue of Yes! Magazine:

The United States locks up more people than any other country, but that hasn't made us safer. The drug war jails thousands of nonviolent addicts. Taxpayers and poor communities lose as states slash social programs to pay for prisons. There's a better way—compassion, not punishment; restoration, not isolation. It's less costly, more humane—and it works.