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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| New prison data blows up narrative that low-level drug offenders are filling up US prisons: experts |
| 2023-02-16 |
| [FoxNews] Violent crime, not drug crime, is driving state prison populations, three experts told Fox News Digital. Newly revealed state inmate population statistics contradict the popular argument from criminal justice reform advocates that prisons are largely filled with nonviolent drug offenders, some experts said. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) show only 12.6% of state prisoners are behind bars for drug-related crimes and only 3.2% are locked up on possession charges – while five times as many people are in state prisons for violent crimes rather than drug charges. "If you listen to people on the left, you'd think that everyone who has a joint in their pocket is getting sent to prison for 20 years, which just is not the case," Zack Smith, a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told Fox News Digital. Prominent Democrats and some Republicans across the country have pushed to decriminalize drugs by arguing, in part, that harsh drug laws have led to a prison-population boom. Smith and Keith Humphreys, an American psychologist and Esther Ting Memorial professor at Stanford University, told Fox News Digital that those positions simply aren't backed up by the data. "It’s been a longtime talking point, particularly around cannabis legalization, to say our prisons are full of pot smokers and nonviolent drug offenders," Humphreys told Fox News Digital. "It’s just something that has never been true, certainly for cannabis. You can get a night in a jail still for cannabis but going to prison is pretty much impossible anymore, not that it ever was possible." Humphreys said that even at the height of the crack cocaine explosion in the 1980s, only about one in five state prisoners were incarcerated for a drug charge of some form. Humphreys explained that "violent crime is driving" prison populations in the United States as evidenced by the data showing 62.4% of state prisoners are serving sentences for violent crimes. The other 40% includes people who previously committed violent crimes or who pleaded down from a violent offense to a lesser offense, he said. Smith agreed, saying people with simple possession charges – especially first-time offenders – "probably pled down" to those charges from a more serious charge. "For instance, a lot of times if someone is potentially facing possession with intent to distribute charges, which carry much higher penalties … the prosecutor might plead down to simple possession charges in that case," Smith said. "So, most of the time, I would suspect that's what's going on." Smith also echoed the conclusion that prison populations are driven by violent crime and not "low-level drug offenders" not just in recent years but historically. "Between 1960 and 1990, the rate of violent crime in the United States surged by over 35%," Smith told Fox News Digital. "It's the biggest increase in our country's history, and so it's that increase in violent crime that was the increase in incarceration and the increasing of incarceration rates. It's not minor drug offenses or really drug offenses, period." Smith said there were 43 million drug arrests in the United States between 1980 and 2012, which "sounds like a lot" until you consider that there were 445 million total arrests during that same time frame, which he said shows that "drug arrests accounted for less than 10% of all arrests over that roughly 32-year period" and runs contrary to the reform narrative. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #3 The feel-good crowd, unfortunately, is impervious to facts and data. |
| Posted by: Tom 2023-02-16 13:23 |
| #2 Some years ago, 25% of inmates in Federal prisons were immigrants. Probably closer to 30% now. Guess half of those are illegals. |
| Posted by: Thruter Gloluger6393 2023-02-16 10:25 |
| #1 I bet there is a high percentage of illegals in the prison population. Would be higher if it wasn’t for Soros and Biden prosecutors. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-02-16 10:13 |