Eugene Jarecki's Documentary 'The House I Live In'

Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “The House I Live In”, informs us on what is known as “The War on Drugs”, and how it costly it is in America. This war has been going on for 40 years and has resulted in more than 45 million arrests, 2.3 million prisoners in the United States itself, $1 trillion in government spending (drug enforcement, prisons, probation officers, etc.). This makes America the largest jailer.

In his documentary, Eugene Jarecki’s provides the stories of individuals who have been affected by drugs both in and out of prison. He also provides personal statements of family members who have been affected by drugs because of the choices of someone close to them involving drugs. Jarecki, explores the risk that prohibition poses to freedom, and how tragic it is for those being treated as criminals.

This documentary also shows us that nothing has changed in the last 40 years. This is because the government is using 2/3 of the funding to treatment rather than law enforcement. Many say that Richord Nixon was the first to address the “Drug War” he said that, “Americas public enemy #1 in the United States is drug abuse. Also the streets are still not a “safer”

environment, and drugs are still being sold illegally at cheaper rates. “If you stand in a federal court, you’re watching poor and uneducated people being fed into a machine like meat to make sausage. It’s just bang, bang, bang, bang. Next!” says journalist Charles Bowden. Bowden has a point many of the prisoners are getting long sentences of jail time for drug use, meanwhile other prisoners who commit crimes such as; rape, and murder are getting lesser jail time which is unconstitutional.

Rational choice theory is the view that crime is a function of a decision mak...

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...drugs. We can do so by using the term defensible space which is the principle that crime can be prevented or displaced by modifying the physical environment to reduce the opportunity that individuals have to commit crime.

One limitation to rational choice theory is shame sentencing. Not every crime can be revoked by using sentence shaming to teach the criminal their lesson. In this case, what would be a good sentence shamming for the crime of being a drug dealer? After watching the documentary “The House I Live In,” I have learned how drugs impact our society and how the justice system feels about it. I feel as if the government should do more on informing our

society on how much non violent is occurring in the United States. The fact that drug laws have become so violent that even the non violent can be locked up for sentencing is crucial to us as a society.