By Rafael A. Mangual
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
The notion that America’s criminal-justice system
regularly locks up otherwise harmless people for minor drug crimes — and does
so largely because of thinly veiled racism — has become a central article of
progressive faith. It was thus not surprising to hear Massachusetts senator
Elizabeth Warren invoke the notion at the liberal We the People Summit earlier this
week. What’s breathtaking, however, is the scope of Warren’s error. In response
to a loaded question from the audience about how the system “criminalize[s]
poverty and communities of color,” Warren replied:
[Criminal-justice reform] starts on
the front end, with the activities we criminalize — for example, low-level drug
offenses. More people [are] locked up
for low-level offenses on marijuana than for all violent crimes in this country.
That makes no sense at all. No sense at all. [Emphasis added.]
She’s right, it doesn’t make sense — because it’s not true. In fact, it’s so at odds with the
publicly available data that one can only conclude that Warren is either
totally unlettered on the subject or was willfully deceiving the audience.
The data on our prison population are unambiguous. As of
December 31, 2016, the total incarcerated population in the U.S. was just over
2.1 million. This includes those held in state and federal prisons as well as
local jails. About 46 percent (as of May 26, 2018) of federal prisoners are in for drug offenses. But these are not mere
pot smokers. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, 99.5 percent of
federal drug prisoners are traffickers, and marijuana is involved in only 12
percent of those cases.
Moreover, only 9 percent (a little over 188,000) of the
country’s inmates are in federal facilities. In state and local facilities —
which house 90 percent of America’s incarcerated persons — it’s a very
different story.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about
15 percent of sentenced state prisoners were serving time for a drug offense as
of December 31, 2015 (the most recent data available). And the vast majority of
drug offenders were in for trafficking. A mere 3 percent of them were being
held for possession. And given that the vast majority of criminal cases end in
plea bargains, the actual crime of a prisoner is often worse than what’s listed
as the official charge. Violent offenders, on the other hand, constituted 54
percent of the nearly 1.3 million sentenced state prisoners. Serious property
offenders (i.e., those convicted of crimes like larceny-theft, burglary, auto
theft, etc.) made up 18 percent. And another 4 percent were imprisoned for a
weapons offense. In other words, those three groups alone — who have committed
crimes for which prison time is almost universally recognized as a just
punishment — constitute more than three-quarters of state inmates.
The typical diagnosis from the criminal-justice-reform
movement is that 1) America locks too many people up and 2) too many people are
put away for harmless drug crimes. It is perfectly reasonable to hold one or
both of those views.
What is not defensible, however, is imagining that
addressing the latter issue will solve the former. Even Fordham Law School
professor John Pfaff, a noted critic of “mass incarceration,” has conceded that
achieving drastic reductions to prison populations “means changing how we
punish violent crimes.” There is simply no way to achieve that goal on the
basis of drug-possession convictions alone, given that a grand total of 4
percent of state and federal prisoners are serving time for such offenses.
Nor would changing the criminal treatment of drug use do
much to change the racial makeup of the nation’s prison population. There are
indeed racial disparities. Blacks make up approximately one-third of state
prison populations, and almost all of them are men. Yet black men constitute
only about 6.5 percent of the U.S. population. But drug enforcement doesn’t
explain that. Data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that
blacks constitute 35 percent of violent offenders, 45 percent of weapons
offenders, 27 percent of property offenders, and 31 percent of drug offenders.
In other words, releasing all drug offenders tomorrow would do almost nothing
to change the black percentage of state prison populations.
It is understandable why criminal-justice-reform
advocates rely on rhetoric about people being put behind bars for nothing more
than smoking marijuana: Few think that’s an appropriate punishment, and most
Americans now think that marijuana should be legalized outright. When advocates
act as if this problem is coextensive with “mass incarceration,” however,
they’re deceiving the public. Make no mistake about it: Deep reductions in
prison populations cannot be accomplished without letting violent criminals
back out on the street.
How many people should we have behind bars? Elizabeth
Warren may think she can figure that number out in the abstract. For the rest
of us, the answer is “however many it takes to keep innocent citizens safe.”
No comments:
Post a Comment