Professor John Pfaff wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post about common misconceptions about U.S. prisons.
Criminal justice policy has secured a prominent place in the Democratic presidential primary race, with several candidates offering plans to reform the way Americans punish. Reinventing how we handle crime is one of the most important civil rights challenges of our time, yet much of the debate is built on misconceptions that push reform in inadequate and even counterproductive directions.
MYTH NO. 1
U.S. prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders.Asked recently about voting rights for felons, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), one of the Democratic presidential candidates, claimed that “we locked up more people for marijuana in 2017 than all the violent crimes combined.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has echoed that view, suggesting on Twitter that the prison system is defined by nonviolent people “stopped w/ a dime bag.”
But the simple truth is that, at a minimum, 55 percent of those in state prison have been convicted of a violent crime — and more than half of these people, or nearly 30 percent of the total prison population, have been found guilty of murder, manslaughter, rape or sexual assault, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Slightly less than 15 percent are incarcerated for drug crimes, even though most Americans believe the figure to be about 50 percent. (Drugs play a bigger role in the federal prison system, but that holds only about 10 percent of all prisoners; most incarcerated people are in state prison.)
The share of those in state prison for committing violence is even greater than 55 percent, however. Prisoners are classified by the most serious offense for which they are convicted, not arrested or charged. So if someone is arrested for a violent crime but ends up pleading guilty to a drug charge, his crime is classified as a nonviolent drug offense, even if the underlying incident — like a domestic violence case in which the victim won’t testify — is the reason the prosecutor sought prison time.