War on drug's impact on women

     For those who have classes with me, I perpetually hone in on the need to treat medical problems, including addiction, as part of the healing process in  a court's decision (note that I don't even like using the words sentencing and judgment;  I would by far prefer to be able to use term like 'rehabilitate' and 'restorative conclusion').
    At any rate..... Women, not surprisingly minorities especially, have faced a dramatic rate of incarceration since the turn of the millennium. 
 Wiki indicate that the numbers in 2001 were 93,031 and in 2010 had spiked to over 200,000. 
    Women's rising rates (7.5 percent more every year) within prison population surpasses male rates of 5 percent growth per year.    This is because we used to not arrest women, but one problem has allowed us to view all offender with equal scrutiny, and that is of course drugs.  
    More than 2/3's of female incarcerates are locked up for non-violent drug offenses. 
 3/4 of those women have children. 
Many of those mother will be behind bars for over 20 years due to mandatory minimums.   This is an undeniably tragic loss to society.   Children suffer the loss of there mother because of our irresponsible regulation of drugs.   This is not an outright proclamation to legalize it (....yea it is)...., but I do think America needs to find a better way to (not) regulate morality, and to focus on the treatment of addiction as opposed to simply enforcing broad base prohibition & interdiction.
The impacts are far greater than most people recognize....
"Removing a parent (perhaps the only parent) from the household is immediately destabilizing, and over the long-term it’s devastating. Parents, once released from prison, may be barred from public assistance and housing and face significantly diminished employment opportunities. Children with a parent in prison are several times more likely than other children to end up in foster care, to drop out of school and to become involved in [crime]".