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Sorry, this is coming purely from personal experience. Edit: found a source citing Federal Bureau of Prisons: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/war-on-d

• tptacek 12y ago
  That's federal prison, which houses a small fraction of inmates, and for more serious offenses. You need to look at the state stats. In California, for instance, drug inmates make up about 14% of the prison population. Violent crime makes up 44% (actually, it's probably quite a bit higher than that, because "burglary" is counted as a property crime). To see why the federal statistics are misleading, consider how someone ends up in federal prison for burglary.
  • juliangregorian 12y ago
    Having experienced it firsthand, I wonder if those numbers don't tell the full story. There are whole families basically going in and out of jail running the drug trade. I never got the sense that violent criminals had quite the "revolving door" effect. Edit: then again, it's likely that drug offenders would be much more open about what they're doing time for. Now that I think about it there could definitely be positive selection bias (or whatever) affecting my perception.
    • tptacek 12y ago
      Their door revolves too, but because their sentences are longer and parole harder to achieve, it revolves more slowly.