On: Study: All non-violent criminals jailed on minor drug offence should be released

[avsteele]

While I agree with the conclusion. People tend to overestimate the fraction of people incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses.

It is only ~15%

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

[hwillis → avsteele]

That's state only; in total it's ~20%.

That still hugely misses the point, because sentences are not equal. Violent offenders serve on average 4.7 years while drug offenders serve under 2 years.

~40% of people who are sent to state prison are sent with drugs as the most serious charge.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/tssp16.pdf

[coffeemaniac → avsteele]

15% of the US prison population is a huge number of people.

[avsteele → avsteele]

And I'm assuming they mean incarcerated (jail+prison) and not just 'jail'. Most of the people in jail are awaiting trial, people in prison have been convicted.

[quietbritishjim → avsteele]

The article linked in the comment you're replying to seems to include both jail and prison. The comment itself didn't mention either and just said "incarcerated".

[greatgirl → avsteele]

> Only 2% of federal criminal defendants go to trial, and most who do are found guilty

From pew research

[greatgirl → avsteele]

That's about where i expected it to be actually, and that's about 200k people, so it's pretty bad.