What does it say about the land of the free when one in 100 adults living here is living behind bars?

“Well, it says several things,” law professor David Crump said. “First of all, we have a lot of crime.”

“It says we do a real good job of incarcerating people,” District Judge Caprice Cosper said.

“It says we’ve overdone it,” radio host Dean Becker said.

With 2.3 million adults in its penal system, slightly more than 1 percent of its adult population, the United States outpaces every nation in the world when it comes to locking people up — including far more populous China and far more oppressive Iran.

What’s more: “The stats also indicate that Texas is leading that effort within the U.S., and if you look at the stats for the state of Texas, it’s easy to recognize that Harris County, the city of Houston is leading the world by far in the incarceration of its own people,” Becker said.

That’s even with a slight drop in the state’s inmate population, according to new report by the Pew Center.

More on that in a moment, but first we wanted to find out just who’s behind bars in Texas and why.

“After 15 years in the justice system, I can tell you undoubtedly what’s driving the train in our incarceration rates are drug offenders — and a lot of that is low-level drug offenders,” Judge Cosper said.

Consider this, of the 50,000-plus felony filings in Harris County courts last year, 20,500 were drug possession cases.

“Of the 20,500 cases, about 12,500 cases were for possession of less than one gram of penalty group one controlled substances: crack, heroine, meth,” the judge said.

Still more interesting: “Of that number, 7,500 were repeat offenders,” Judge Cosper said. “This was not their first time in the justice system, and there were actually 3,400 cases that involved people who had five or more felonies primarily for possession.”

Which brings to light an interesting point in the Pew study. Nationally, there’s been a 315 jump in discretionary spending on corrections over the past 20 years, and yet the number of repeat offenders remains relatively unchanged.

About half of all inmates return to prison or jail within three years of their release, which begs the questions: What kind of return are we getting on our investment? And are we getting too tough on taxpayers by getting tough on crime?

“It’s not enough just to be tough any more,” Judge Cosper said. “You’ve got to be smart.”

Few would argue that violent criminals don’t belong behind bars, but what about some of the low-level offenders who are clogging up the system? What about drug offenders?

On one end of the spectrum, you have people like Pacifica Houston radio host Becker.

“Broadcasting from the gulag filling station planet earth, this is cultural baggage, the unvarnished truth about the drug war,” he said.

A former military police officer in the Air Force, he favors legalizing drugs.

“To tax them, to regulate them, to actually control these supposedly controlled substances,” Becker said. “We’d have plenty of room in prison then to hold anyone who would dare sell drugs to our children.”

“Well, I’m not a believer in decriminalizing a depenalizing our hardest drugs,” Judge Cosper said.

But Judge Cosper, who falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, concedes: “You can incarcerate people with addiction. If you don’t do anything to treat them, you can guarantee they’ll be right back behind bars.”

Which is why she’s a huge proponent of the county’s STAR drug court. It gives low-level offenders a choice: take part in a success through addiction recovery program for 12 to 14 months or do the jail time.

“I’d been in and out of jail so many times,” STAR program graduate Kathryn Griffin said. “I did a year flat in state jail in Texas, but if you add up all the years and all the time, I’ve done a total of eight years.”

But after completing the star program, former crack addict Griffin has never looked back.  She now does community outreach for council member peter brown’s office.

“The drug court saved my life,” she said.

And cost half the price of prison or jail, saving the taxpayers money.