> If any sort of majority of our prison population had committed violent crimes This is more or less a myth, depending on how you define "violent" and how you

> If any sort of majority of our prison population had committed violent crimes This is more or less a myth, depending on how you define "violent" and how you define "prison population." No matter how you define those terms, "a significant percentage of the prison population is there for a serious non-drug crime" should be uncontroversial. Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html Memes about mass incarceration have been almost too successful, so that people now have the wrong idea in the other direction. According to Wikipedia, "15 percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious infraction." That is enough of a scandal on its own terms, but people have sort of inflated the claims beyond what's really supported by the evidence. It's 15%, not "most" and not a majority, etc. In fact most prisoners are there for serious non-drug offenses. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...