The United States is number one in the world when it comes to persons incarcerated per capita. That appears to be a standing we want to keep:

Nearly one in three Americans will already have been arrested by the age of 23, recent research suggests.

A study analyzing data from the federal government’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that 30.2 percent of 23-year-olds reported being arrested for something more serious that a traffic violation.

It’s the first time since the 1960s that researchers have tried to determine how often young people are arrested. A similar study in 1965 found that only 22 percent reported being arrested by age 23.

This of course brings to task another problem – employment. With more and more companies doing background checks, especially with an over supply of workers, that means more and more people become unemployable. John Doe got busted smoking a doob when he was 18. Now he’s 30 and hasn’t touched the stuff since then, but the record is still there and now he can’t be hired.

Maybe it’s time for America to really look at our ridiculous drug laws. Many call this a “liberal” stance, but it’s also a conservative one, as it would save our nation millions per year, as well as a Libertarian issue.

A jailed society costs us money not only in terms of the cost of incarceration, but also in the cost of valuable workers we might loose simple because they have that ding on their record. It’s time for America to grow up and realize that people do drugs, of which a lot is something more minor than alcohol. Make that legal and some of our problems go away.