The War on Drugs

I have found it difficult to narrow my topic, because there is so much for me to talk about. The War on Drugs is a broad topic and there are so many different directions I could take. I was debating between incarceration and treatment or legalizing/decriminalizing drugs, but I decided on incarceration and treatment because it is a policy, and it is a topic that I like more than legalizing/decriminalizing drugs.

My target audience is policy makers. I think we need a clarification on the “smart on crime” policy. What does it actually mean? What is going on right now and what is going to change? I’m going to assume they know about the war on drugs, so I will be focusing on what is going on today and what needs to change or stay the same. I want to write about what has been done and what needs to be done. I want policy makers to realize how important the War on Drugs is and how we need to make sure change is actually going to happen. 

The amount of people being incarcerated is rising. Most of the people are being arrested for drug related crimes, whether it be for the possession of drugs, intent to distribute, having drugs in their system, etc. Too many people are being incarcerated for are non-violent drug crimes, and are filling up space in our prisons. Having them in jail affects their families and their children especially. It is also becoming more expensive to keep them in prison, when it would be more cost effective to put these people into treatment programs.

The policy isn’t very clear about what “smart on crime” really means and I think that it needs to be clarified. They need to define what is going to be done, and how law enforcement is going to change. Something needs to be done, but there aren’t many specifics. It does mention certain reform programs

I’m a little concerned about writing an eight to ten page paper about the War on Drugs and the "smart on crime" policy. There is a lot of information out there, but I don’t know if my topic is something I know enough about to write a good paper on. Some of the sources I did for the annotated bibliography won’t work because I have finally narrowed my topic and they won’t fit, so I have to find more, but hopefully that will help me find enough to write about. I’m also worried about writing the issues paper correctly because I haven’t really done anything like this before.