By C1 Staff
Most accept the explanation that the war on drugs is what’s filling the United States prisons to the brim, but law professor John Pfaff has another proposal to consider.
In an interview with Slate, Pfaff explains that only 17 percent of inmates in state prisons are being held on drug charges.
“If you released every person in prison on a drug charge today, our state prison population would drop from about 1.5 million to 1.2 million. So we’d still be the world’s largest incarcerating country,” he said.
According to Pfaff, the real issues stems from a “dramatic” crime surge between 1975 and 1991, which could explain an increasing prison population. In the ensuing years, even as crime rates dropped, the changing habits of district attorneys could explain the growing number of people in prison.
Between 1998 and 2004, “the probability that a district attorney files a felony charge against an arrestee goes from about one in three to two in three,” he explained.
“If we’re trying to reduce the prison population, we want to make sure we do it correctly – and if you focus on the wrong thing, you won’t solve the problem.”
To do so, according to Pfaff, we need to focus on regulating the actions of Das, which is tough to do.