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"This three-part series documented the role of the 1970s-era drug laws in the huge growth of prisons in New York State, and its questionable results: the incarceration of thousands of low level offenders who are almost exclusively black or Hispanic. The series further found that sentencing and parole trends have kept prisons full in the 1990s despite a huge drop in crime, questioning whether the economic and political muscle of the prison lobby had begun to influence sentence policy. And it outlined the declining opportunities for rehabilitation within prison walls, couple with the increasingly punitive atmosphere there."