Drug crimes and incarceration rates due to the war on drugs and strict law enforcement policies have found their target in the states' poor communities -United; thus, drug laws became racist prejudices. Eugene Jarecki's documentary The House I Live In highlights the growing consequences low-income families face due to mandatory minimum sentences for possession, sale or use of illicit substances. In Jarecki's film (2012), he interviewed Pat Robertson who said: "If you go into federal court, you see poor, uneducated people being fed into a machine. Like meat for sausages” to describe the impact of drug laws on poverty-stricken individuals who cannot afford a proper defense attorney. The effects of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have come to affect low-income minorities, in which convicted criminals are kept in a continuous cycle of seeking refuge on the streets and in the drug underworld. Individuals targeted by strict police surveillance and drug enforcement have become another number in the correctional system; thus, incarceration rates are skyrocketing. Individuals also face the inability to escape the realm of drugs and crime; meanwhile, the nation continues to fall into debt while waging war against its own people. Control of drug laws and their strict enforcement vary by state and city, with some communities becoming highly vulnerable to incarceration. Lynch, Omori, Rousell, and Valasik (2013) concluded that the high number of prosecutions of drug suspects in “problem areas” has resulted in deteriorating communities. (p. 337). Communities became witnesses... middle of paper ...... labor. Convinced of drug addiction and forced to live in poverty-stricken areas, drug offenders face the inability to recover and escape their entrenchment in the world. medicines. Works CitedDrug Policy Alliance. (2014). http://www.drugpolicy.org/Lynch, M., Omori, M., Roussell, A., & Valasik, M. (2013). Policing the “progressive” city: The racialized geography of drug law enforcement. Theoretical Criminology, 17(3), 335-357. Retrieved from the Criminal Justice Abstracts database. Schoenfeld, H. (2012). The War on Drugs, the Politics of Crime, and Mass Incarceration in the United States. Journal of Gender, Race, and Injustice, 15(2), 315-352. Retrieved from Criminal Justice Abstracts.St. John, C., Shopsin, M., Cullman, S. and Jarecki, E. (producer) and Eugene, J. (producer). (2012). The house I live in [Motion Picture]. UNITED STATES