TRUE FACTS ON NUMBER OF IMPRISONED DRUG OFFENDERS

Obama is either deliberately lying or ignorant of the true facts when he declares that the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders is “the real reason our prison population is so high”

When President Obama addressed the NAACP annual convention in Philadelphia July 14, he bemoaned the high incarceration rate of black nonviolent drug offenders and called for reform of the criminal justice system. He blamed our mass incarceration on the large number of nonviolent drug offenders sent to prison. Obama also said that mass incarceration prevents too many people, especially minority men, from contributing to society, the economy, and their children’s lives.

Obama is either deliberately lying or ignorant of the true facts when he declares that the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders is “the real reason our prison population is so high.”

“The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration,” an article by Gilad Edelman which was published the week of July 12 in The New Yorker, lays out the true facts about the number of inmates serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. The article notes that Obama is perpetrating a myth long held by prison reformers. The truth is, that while drug offenders make up about half of all federal prison inmates, they make up only 16 percent of the inmate population in state prisons. And the article noted that the federal prisons hold only 200,000 inmates, while the total number held in state prisons is 1.3 million inmates.

Here is an excerpt from “The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration” by Gilad Edelman:

Obama ….. repeated one of the most enduring myths of criminal-justice reform. “Over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before,” the President said. “And that is the real reason our prison population is so high.”

It is simply not true that the growth of the prison population is mainly due to the sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders. About half of federal inmates are serving sentences for drug crimes, but the federal system only accounts for about two hundred thousand prisoners. In state prisons, which house about 1.3 million, only sixteen per cent of inmates are serving a sentence for nonviolent drug offenses, according to the latest Department of Justice statistics. About fifty-four per cent, by far the largest number, are there for violent crimes, and about nineteen per cent for property offenses, like burglary.

There is less data on the breakdown of the more than seven hundred thousand people in local jails; the most recent D.O.J. survey, in 2002, found that people with drug charges and violent-crime charges each made up about a quarter of jail inmates.

Prison reformers have fooled us into believing their lies about prisons being overcrowded with nonviolent drug offenders. Maybe they fooled the President too, but he and his speech writers had the Department of Justice statistics readily at hand.

In his address to the NAACP, Obama also implied that the criminal justice system is racist because, while blacks and Latinos make up about 30 percent of our population, they represent 60 percent of the inmates in our prisons.

I am not going to deny that in some instances the criminal justice system has been and may still be discriminatory. But I’ve got news for Mr. Obama. The reason those 60 percent of blacks and Latinos are imprisoned is because they are criminals. They’re not serving time for skipping Sunday school or singing off key in the church choir. They are murderers, rapists, child molesters, robbers, burglars and - yes - drug offenders.

Furthermore, if only 16 percent of all state prison inmates are drug offenders, that means 84 percent are incarcerated for murder, attempted murder, assaults that caused great bodily injury, rape, child molestation, robbery, burglary, grand theft and other felonies. Now, what about the Latinos and blacks Obama bemoans? Except for murderers, like most white inmates, those Latinos and blacks were repeat offenders, and not thrown in prison by a racist criminal justice system the first time they got caught committing a felony.

And what about all those poor ‘nonviolent’ drug offenders doing time in federal prisons? The feds do not prosecute small-time drug peddlers. All those federal drug offenders are doing time for the large-scale manufacture, distribution or sales of illegal drugs. Sorry Mr. President, but they’re not in the joint for smoking a joint.

When he visited the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma and met with six inmates doing time for drug offenses, Obama lamented their being in prison for making youthful ‘mistakes.’ Apparently, in the President’s mind, when black gangbangers go around shooting up black neighborhoods and dealing dope, they are making mistakes, youthful mistakes, rather than committing crimes.

As for the President’s phony baloney about the number of imprisoned drug offenders, the simple truth is that since they make up only 16 percent of the total state prison population, drug offenders cannot possibly account for the nation’s high prison population. Even a math dysfunctional high school dropout can figure that out, Mr. Obama!