Our economy has been improving over time, but few would say that we’re where the grass is greener yet; we’re still spending to grease the gears of the economy and trying to reign in poor financial practices in order to prevent another market failure due to said practices. Despite most economists agreeing that government spending in a recession does help the economy, and to the delight of the media, an entire movement—the Tea Party—has sprung up calling for less government spending and less wasteful spending due to deficit spending.

Realizing that most spending is critical to recovery, and that pork barrel spending is a necessary part of the political process (although no politician will ever admit to this), there are few places where budgets can be cut back quickly in order to save cash, quiet the opposition, and still have an effective recovery and reinvestment in our economy and nation.

One place to look for savings is our prison system; one thing it seems that both the left and the right agree on is that it is inefficient and does need to be rekeyed. It seems that much of this inefficiency is due to mandatory minimum laws[1]. As Supreme Court Justice Kennedy say, “in too many cases, mandatory minimums are unwise or unjust.” Let’s look at some stats from The Sentencing Project, an organization founded in 1986 to give lawyers sentencing advocacy training, it states in “The Federal Prison Population: A Statistical Analysis” that:

“More than half…of federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense…Nearly three-fourths…of the population are non-violent offenders with no history of violence…One-third…are first-time, non-violent offenders….More than half…of persons sentenced for a drug offense in 2002 fell into the lowest…criminal history category (Category 1) of the sentencing guidelines, and in 87% of cases no weapon was involved.”

What we can extrapolate from this data is that many offenders in prison committed a Category 1 crimes (some for the first time) wherein no drugs, but no weapon, were involved. Simply put, they were probably dealing, running, or using a small amount of drugs. This is by no means a good thing, but jailing people for these crimes is definitely not the answer; it can easily be stated that—if judges did not have to give prisoners a mandatory minimum jail sentence—they could give them probation and counseling.

The Rand Monograph Report “the treatment of cocaine addicts [demand-side drug control] is 23x more effective than the eradication of coca at its source”. Clearly, giving drug offenders treatment and counsel for their actions in better than incarceration. In fact, the Office of National Drug Control Policy states that demand-side control is more effective than other forms of drug control.

Not only is the alternative to incarceration more efficient, but incarceration makes the problem worse. The Prison Policy Organization states that, “the majority of prisoners who are released either fail to successfully complete parole or are shortly returned to prison after committing a new crime.” Jens Soering, an author and current life-time prisoner suggests that growth in crime is not the main contributor to growth in the prison population, but an inefficient incarceration system that makes prisoners more likely to get reincarcerated.

So, to keep things in order we have seen the following thus far: lots of people are in jail because of non-violent, first-time, drug offenses that could be given other, more effective sentences and that prison ends up making people more likely to get put back in jail.

If we repeal mandatory minimums, and begin reforming Category 1 offenders, what is the ballpark estimate of how much money we would save in the prison system? We can look again to The Drug Policy Organization who states that, on average the cost of a prisoner is $22,632 per year. Seeing that The Drug War Facts Organization has our current prison population at about 1.5 million, and The Sentencing Project has the amount if Category 1 offenders at about 50% of the prison population we can calculate the savings from giving these people treatment instead of prison terms at around 17 billion dollars—a small sum in terms of the whole pie, but a penny saved is a penny earned—this is not to mention the savings had from not having prisoners re-enter the system due to more effective policy, and from their being a greater resource-to-prisoner ratio since less prisoners are now in jail (overcrowding creates problems in prisons that relate to this article, but that would make it a much longer piece).

So, when we need to spend money in order to save our economy, and when we need to silence constituents complaining about spending in order to remain control of the House and Senate, what can we do? We can alter mandatory minimums law. It’s got significant savings (almost the size of the NASA budget), isn’t going to hurt the economy, and makes our policies more effective on a whole.

Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself under the knife. After the debacle last month on the flotilla Mavi Marmara during which Israeli troops opened fire on Turkish activists (killing nine), international pressure has mounted on Israel to relax a failed land blockade against Gaza. This blockade was designed to protect Israeli national security after Hamas rocket attacks intensified in the fall of 2008. Since the blockade was instated, Hamas has not only reaffirmed its dominance in the region, but, utilizing a complex economic network of underground tunnels into Egypt, it has redeveloped a fragmented society that was ransacked during Israel’s military offensive last January. Israel’s aggression has also hurt them in the West Bank, where radicalized youth have turned to Hamas in droves, weakening Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas’ legitimacy, and offending valuable allies such as Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

This week, Jerusalem has finally relented, as senior administration officials announced a new policy that will ease the land blockade against Gaza. This allows some goods to be traded between the Israeli mainland and Gazans, but limits many others, especially weapons and military materiel (and steel, which the Administration fears could be used as a weapon), to a strict “blacklist.” For the foreseeable future, the embargo on sea trade will remain almost fully intact, which will limit international aid to the strip, frustrating allies in Turkey and the European Union.

Hamas has publicly dismissed the new policy as “status quo” and has called for a wholesale removal of the blockade. But that is not feasible for the coalition between conservative Likud and nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu in the Knesset and their supporters. Although Netanyahu’s domestic political future seems secure, for now at least, a complete relaxation of the current policy would not be healthy for Israel’s national security, which is clearly his chief priority as Prime Minister.

In the post-September 11th world, national security and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive properties, especially in dealing with non-state terrorist actors who continue to take increased prominence around the world. To enhance one, government must, to some extent, sacrifice the other. Israel must find the most just and the most secure Gaza policy that is politically feasible. This will be essential in restoring its legitimacy throughout the Arab and Muslim world. But any such balance will be tenuous, especially in an environment where the national security infrastructure is often under intense scrutiny.

Simply put, this new Gaza policy is just a beginning. Even with this shift in rhetoric and regulation, the underground tunnels between Egypt and Gaza will remain in business - at least for now. Israel will continue to face political strife for limiting the flow of international aid into the desert strip, and Hamas will continue to exert its power on the strip - allowing Iran to leverage itself in the region.

A successful solution to the Gaza conundrum must include two tenets (a relaxed policy does not mean a feckless policy): meticulous UN regulation of goods entering the region (particularly weapons material), using an international mediator to legitimize the policy, and a rock-solid ceasefire agreement, ensuring that that Southern Israel is protected from rocket strikes that drove them to invade the desert strip in January 2009.