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Distorted Priorities: Drug Offenders in State Prisons

First page of PDF with filename: 9038.pdf
  • Date
  • September 2002

Distorted priorities details the escalation of law enforcement and harsh sentencing policies in the United States over the past two decades to the present. These policies have led to the mass incarceration of mostly non-violent offenders and skyrocketing costs for state tax payers.

Highlights of the report include the following:

  • 58 percent of drug prisoners—an estimated 124,885 inmates—have no history of violence or high level drug activity.
  • Three-quarters of the drug offenders in state prisons have only been convicted of drug and/or non-violent offenses; one-third of the total have only been convicted of drug crimes.
  • Four of every five drug prisoners are African American (56 percent) and Hispanic (23 percent), well above their respective rates (13 percent and 9 percent) of overall drug use.

Read more

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