Analysis: It’s not drug crime that drives mass incarceration, it’s violence. And that’s a much harder problem to solve.
John Pfaff is a professor of law at the Fordham University School of Law and the author of “Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform.”
All this actually understates the extent to which it is our response to violence, not drugs, that drives mass incarceration. That 15 percent number means that 15 percent of the people in prison were convicted of a drug crime; the underlying facts might be more complicated. Someone, say, arrested for assault and found to have drugs on him at the time of the arrest might agree to a deal in which he pleads guilty to just the drug charge.
Now, to be clear, sending fewer people to prison for drugs is a good idea. Incarceration—especially in the cruel, brutal places that American prisons are—is inarguably harsh and counterproductive for drug cases, even if we accept that drugs, including marijuana, should remain illegal. And the focus in the debates on drugs likely did more harm than good. Americans already remain quite reluctant to change how we punish violence, in no small part because they misperceive the importance of drugs. A 2016 poll by Vox, for example, reported that a majority of Americans incorrectly think about half of people in prison are there for drugs.
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