>>>Thanks largely to the war on drugs and the get-tough movement, millions of people — overwhelmingly poor people of color — have been swept into our criminal justice system mainly for nonviolent and drug offenses, branded criminals and felons.<<<
This is an outright lie.
In 2009, the most recent data available, 53% of state
prison inmates were serving time for violent offenses,
19% for property, 18% for drug, and 9% for public order
offenses.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf
Only 18% of State inmates are in for drugs. 72% are in for either violent or property crimes.
The writer’s conflating of “drug and non-violent crimes” is also very deceptive. If I break into your house, ransack the place and steal all of your valuables that is a “non-violent crime”. If I steal 12 cars and sell them to chop shops, those are all “non-violent crimes” as well.
Besides that, I’d be willing to be that a good percentage of inmates, in for drugs, have also committed violent or proprety crimes, but were only caught and convicted on the drug crimes. It is a lot easier to catch a guy who makes his living as an armed robber or burgular, with a bag of illegal drugs in his car, than it is to connect him to his violent and property crimes and prove in court that he committed them.
With the exception of a few politically incorrect “crimes” our nation tries WAY too hard to keep people OUT of jail. Most inmates who are in for all but the most serious crimes, have been given multiple chances with probation or various programs before finally being sent to prison. There are FAR more people walkng the streets, who deserve to be in prison than vice versa.
I’d love to see some of these racist, Liberal whackos go live in a prison for a year with these “victims” of our criminal justice system and THEN tell us which ones they think shouldn’t be there.
Yep. What you said.