Criminal Justice Budget Essay

Harris County, in Houston Texas, contains a pretty large existence, and a large majority of that population classified as home owners. Harris countys geographic size is considerably large, with a population estimate transcend 3,935,855 peoples in 2007 (US enumerate Bureau, 2009). Further much, the percentage of Caucasians is more or less 73. 6%, with the Black population consisting of 18. 9%, Native the Statesns exceeding . 6%, Asian persons around 5. 5% and lastly the Hispanic population being around 38.6% (US enumerate Bureau, 2009). The land area per 200 square miles is 1,728. Harris Countys current federal official sp remnant compute for the year of 2007 is around 21, 152, 659. When determining a budget for Harris County, one important aspect to consider is the countys retail sales, which is around 39,358,036, displaying the current of industry and economic growth. The federal g everyplacenment spent over 19 one thousand million dollars in 2003 on the state of war on medicines, at a rate of about 600 dollars per second (www.drugsense. org). The total amount of notes spent on the war on drugs at the federal direct is about 4,258,600,939, while at the state level 6,536,936,825, totaling over 10,800,600,300 dollars (www. drugsense. com). The failed war on drugs has not stopped drug habit, on the contrary, it has made outlaw cartels rich by illegalizing drugs, thus giving them a product to sell, and change magnitude not only the availability and potency of drugs, but, also their rate of usage across the country.For example, after the US has spent over 500 billion dollars to fight drugs, cocaine is now as cheap as it was when top banana Escobar died and more heavily used, furthermore, methamphetamine, which was barley even a problem in the years following 1993, is now used by over 1. 5 million Americans and is proven to be more addictive than crack (Wells, 2007). The war on drugs has put over 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes with no d iscernable effect on the drug trafficking industry, if anything it has grown (Wells, 2007).When preparing a budget for Harris County, the most important thing that could be done is ending the failed war on drugs, which would save tax payers an estimated 12 billion dollars or more a year. Furthermore, instead of focusing a majority of the states federal budget on building more prisons begin building more universities, and residential communities. I find it interesting to note that the annual represent to tax payers in California to keep and maintain their prisons is around 10 billion per year, if this expenditure trend continues California will be spending more on prisons than on universities (Abramsky, 2007).In ending the war on drugs, with the billions that would be saved, tax cuts, business incentives, and an overall increase in the measure of living for the community. Furthermore, instead of building prisons, states could build real, industry that produces real goods. Reference s Wells, Ben (2007) How America Lost the contend on Drugs Rolling Stone retrieved on exhibit 16, 2009 from http//www. rollingstone. com/news/story/17438347/how_america_lost_the_war_on_drugsAbramsky, Sasha (2007) Prison Crisis Will California Spend more on jails than Universities? Rights and Liberties retrieved on March 16, 2009 from http//www. alternet. org/rights/65868/? page=entire US Census Bureau (2009) State and County quick facts The US Census Bureau on March 16, 2009 from http//quickfacts. census. gov/qfd/states/48/48201. html Unknown Author (2009) Drug War Clock Drug Sense retrieved on March 16, 2009 from http//www. drugsense. org/wodclock. htm