Here is an interesting documentary film on wasteful incarceration.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-war-on-drugs/
I also Googled “percentage of prisoners for personal drug use”, and “percentage of prisoners for non violent crimes.” There is a lot of informative material, but not one specific list of statistics. Just looking over the titles it appears that more than half of prisoners are there for non violent crimes, and about 1/4 for marijuana use. A major problem is that because the prisons are crowded, often through mandatory drug sentencing, early release is being given to rapists and murders to make room. Crazy!!
Somewhere upthread it was noted that many in prison on marijuana possession charges are there due to violating parole.
In addition, many in prison on dope charges alone would, could and should be convicted of assualt, larceny, robbery, rape, and hundreds of other crimes that dopers often commit, but because of an overextended court system that can’t possibly prosecute and spend the time and energy to put these dangerous criminals in jail, they often take the easy way out. They convict based on the pot or the pipe the perp was carrying at the time of the arrest.
And yet - because this is common and ordinary - there are still those leftists that argue marijuana usage is of no concern to me or you.
Our prisons and our welfare roles are unable to handle the dopers we have now, yet these libs want to legalize marijuana and add to the problem?
Unbelievable!
My niece’s boyfriend is in prison right now for drugs but the last thing he was caught doing? Stuffing his best friends body into the back of an SUV. Seems that he overdosed and boyfriend panicked.