War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) (1999)

***The first few minutes are in dutch, but the rest is in english.
The war on drugs has been going on for more than three decades.
Today, nearly 500,000 Americans are imprisoned on drug charges.
In 1980 the number was 50,000. Last year $40 billion in taxpayer
dollars were spent in fighting the war on drugs. As a result of
the incarceration obsession, the United States operates the largest
prison system on the planet, and the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population
is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska. Try to
imagine the Drug Enforcement Administration erecting razor wire barricades
around two states to control crime and you'll get the picture. According to
the U.S. Dept of Justice, the number of offenders under age 18 imprisoned
for drug offenses increased twelvefold from 1985 to 1997. The group most
affected by this propensity for incarceration is African-Americans. From 1985 to 1997,
the percentage of African-American young people put in prison increased from 53 to 62
percent. Today, 89 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and
46 percent have been trained by active duty armed forces. The most common use
of paramilitary units is serving drug-related search warrants, which usually
involve no-knock entries into private homes