violent drug offense is one aspect of this. There is also the view that incarceration "is growing into an experience that more and more dramatically is being defined along racial and class lines" (Clarke, 1998, p. 14). In this regard, it is argued that blacks and Hispanics, who represent about 30 percent of the national population, comprise as much as 85 percent of the prison population in some areas of the country. Clarke (1998, p. 14) cites Jerome Miller, an advocate of alternative sentencing practices, to the effect that the white majority sees drug crime as a "black" or "brown" problem and unfairly urges "vibrant support for increasingly punitive sentencing policies and program reductions inside of prisons." Along the same lines, Clarke reports that in the contemporary anti-drug environment, the war on drugs comes down to a war on youth, particularly minority youth.
Meanwhile, the regulation of prison environment appears to vary widely. In some minimum-security facilities, for example, conjugal visits are allowed. On the other hand, owing to concerns about security, possible recidivism, and a view held by some that prisons should be a place of punishment and not creature comforts, conjugal visits have been withdrawn (Finn, 1996). In some high-security facilities, conjugal visits are controversial because they have been associated with prison-guard bribery (Stewart, 1997).
The increase in prison population, differences in prison-facilities management, corruption of prison officials, and accusations of racial bias in sentencing offenders of all kinds takes place at a time when the overall statistics of violent crime are down. Clarke (1998) reports double-digit decreases in crime in the 1990s in both California, which has a three-strikes life-imprisonment policy for habitual felons, and New York, which does not. Advocates of lenient sentencing of drug offenders cite the "virtual extinction" of violence related to cocaine tr
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