Jail is not the answer

The U.S has only 5% of the worlds population but it has one fourth of the worlds prisoners. With that statistic we have to ask ourselves why? The episode of 30 days helped me understand why we have so many prisoners. It seems like we just throw people in jail for anything these days. I found out that 50% of prisoners are in jail because of drugs. I was really shocked about this because jail is not the right approach to taking drugs addicts off the streets. Forcing people not to do drugs will not help them at all, there is a reason why they are addicted. They need to get help and not just sit in a room all day. Its good that they have a program where they help addicts get clean but its not mandatory and you can leave whenever you want. Instead what prisons should be doing is sending drug addicts to rehab or making all drug convicted people go to some type of drug prevention program. I also think they dint treat mental patients right, again they need to be sent somewhere to get help with there problem. The prison system really has to make some type of change, prisoners should not be sleeping on the ground and be there if its not for a drug problem or has mental problems.