Locked In by John Pfaff does a great job of discussing prison reform, and the fallbacks of common mantras (such as this one). He observes that "setting every dr

Locked In by John Pfaff does a great job of discussing prison reform, and the fallbacks of common mantras (such as this one). He observes that "setting every drug offender free would cut our prison population by only about 16 percent...still more than 200,000 people -- and that's a huge number by any measure." Because many offenses/crimes were dropped as part of plea bargaining, it's also hard to indicate how many would actually be characterized as "non-violent criminals jailed on minor drug offence". Pfaff tries to estimate this using Bureau of Justice Statistics surveying that asks inmates questions that go beyond their official convictions. According to this "about 1 percent of all prisoners...met that description". So yes, I think a lot of people would agree with the headline here, but it's not a panacea for the incarceration rate of the US.