zlacker

>>RBBron+(OP)
Never heard of it, but sounds dangerous helping out rapists and murderers and such.

>>sowww+G9
Perhaps, but unless you want a permanent under class of people unable to find real employment, there needs to be an on-ramp. Either someone is too dangerous to have in public (which case they should still be imprisoned), or they have served their sentence and their punishment is over.

>>Karuna+sa
To add to this, 45% of people in federal prison are there for a drug charge.

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

Only a little over 1/3rd are actually in prison for violent crime.

>>Sohcah+0d
That's a stat for Federal prisons - it's a completely different set of laws and crimes than state and local laws, and only 10% Americans incarcerated are in federal prisons.

Here's a breakdown by most serious offense for my state's prison system:

https://www.doc.sc.gov/research/InmatePopulationStats/ASOF-M...

Which has 16% drugs, but also:

26% homicide, 12% Robbery, 11% Burglary, 9.5% Rape/Sexual assault, 6.6% Kidnapping, 6.4% Assault.

I wrote an blog post a while back about how prison populations skew so much towards the most violent crimes.

http://braino.org/essays/why_so_many_people_in_prison/