"Two days after being sworn in, Alvin Bragg shared a memo with staff Monday noting that his office will not prosecute low-level offenses like marijuana misdemeanors, refusal to pay for public transportation fare, prostitution and resisting arrest, unless given alongside a felony charge. Instead, they would be offered a community-based diversion program."
Does that sound unreasonable? When about 1 in 150 Americans are currently incarcerated?
The heavy use of the crude tool of locking people up as a solution for crime is a peculiarity of the American judicial approach, in contrast to other Western nations. Certainly there are crimes that warrant it, but possession of something that hasn't caused harm may not meet the bar for this approach, when you look at how counterproductive 'corrections' like this measurably are, and the larger history of its use as a tool of prejudice, poor police work, and the profit motive of privately owned prisons.
John Oliver recently put out an explanation of how bail reform is desperately needed in this country, if you're interested in learning that way. An alarming takeaway I had from it is that half a million Americans are currently in jail awaiting their case to be heard, unable to post bail. They are not convicted, only charged. Some non-zero number of them are innocent, their lives completely upended and in indefinite limbo.
While I completely agree about bail reform, I think you may have a misconception about prison populations (people actually convicted.)
Of the roughly 1 million people incarcerated in state prisons, over 60% are there for violent crimes. About 3.8% are in prison for drug possession - about 40,000. So yes, too many, but not 1 in 150. Now, 1 in 5 people are in jail for some kind of drug offense, but that's not simple possession.
It's definitely worth having the conversation about what to do about that, but don't think that 'possession of something that hasn't caused harm' is the cause of most incarcerations.
Yes, anyone who has walked around NYC in the last 10 years and thinks that theres some sort of mass incarceration of marijuana users is delusional. The smell is basically on any block on any given day, and theres open selling of it from unlicensed mobile dispensaries.
Pretending the jails are filled with non-violent simple drug offenders is someone either ill informed or not wanting to have a serious conversation. Either way, they are probably not in a position to be harmed one way or the other by increased criminal violence because they are high status enough to believe their zip code or income insulate them from it.
Further, to your stat of 60% of incarcerated being their for violent offenses probably undersells how many were "violent". The NY bail reform laws were passed by pols who said it only applied to "non violent" offenses.
However the criminal law definition & intuitive civilian understanding of "non violent" do not necessarily align. There were plenty of cases in NYC post 2019 of people getting pushed down the stairs of subways, or sucker punched on the sidewalk which somehow fell into the "non-violent" bucket, for the purposes of the law.
The whole argument on bail reform would be moot if suspects were getting a speedy trial. We shouldn't be hearing of cases where people are out on the streets able to commit 5 different offenses over 9 months while still awaiting trial on the first charges.
Agreed that if speedy trials were a thing, the local jail and bail reform problem would be greatly reduced. But there has been some refuted talking points around someone commiting 5 or 9 (or whatever made up number) of multiple distinct crimes while awaiting trial. If it happens it's exceedingly rare. Please link me to them if you find them.
It is much closer to 2 million those who are incarcerated with about 400,000 of those from drug possession. Less than half for violent offenses and that's probably an overcount.
I mentioned in 1 in 150 Americans because that's the ratio of 2 million to ~300 million of the US population.
I think it's really, really important to be careful with words when discussing things like this.
PPI did not estimate that 400,000 are currently incarcerated for drug possession. They estimated that 400,000 are currently incarcerated for drug related crimes. In the state system, among people convicted (again, we agree about bail reform, so I wasn't talking about the 500,000 people not convicted, and fed is a totally different animal so focused on what is most likely), only 40,000, according to the PPI estimates, are there for drug possession.
And again, though yes, entering someone's home at night for the purpose of theft is considered a violent crime in some jurisdictions, 600,000 people are estimated to be incarcerated in state prison for violent crimes - of those, maybe you could say that there is an exaggeration in some of the 120k there for robbery. According to that PPI sheet, 140,000 or so are in state prison for murder.
Removing those currently incarcerated while awaiting trial, you have 1.5 million in all prisons and a 453/100k incarceration rate. That's about 4X Canada's. Removing all drug convictions, not just possession, would decrease that number to about 1.25 million. To match Canada's rate, we'd need to have about 350k incarcerated individuals; right now, according to that PPI sheet, we have about 290,000 incarcerated for rape/sexual assault, murder, and manslaughter alone.
gausswho says >"Does that sound unreasonable? When about 1 in 150 Americans are currently incarcerated?"<
Incarcerated for what and for how long? You're just giving numbers without specifying their offenses nor whether they are locked up awaiting trial or the end of their sentences.
"Two days after being sworn in, Alvin Bragg shared a memo with staff Monday noting that his office will not prosecute low-level offenses like marijuana misdemeanors, refusal to pay for public transportation fare, prostitution and resisting arrest, unless given alongside a felony charge. Instead, they would be offered a community-based diversion program."
Does that sound unreasonable? When about 1 in 150 Americans are currently incarcerated?
The heavy use of the crude tool of locking people up as a solution for crime is a peculiarity of the American judicial approach, in contrast to other Western nations. Certainly there are crimes that warrant it, but possession of something that hasn't caused harm may not meet the bar for this approach, when you look at how counterproductive 'corrections' like this measurably are, and the larger history of its use as a tool of prejudice, poor police work, and the profit motive of privately owned prisons.
John Oliver recently put out an explanation of how bail reform is desperately needed in this country, if you're interested in learning that way. An alarming takeaway I had from it is that half a million Americans are currently in jail awaiting their case to be heard, unable to post bail. They are not convicted, only charged. Some non-zero number of them are innocent, their lives completely upended and in indefinite limbo.