The bipartisan coalition on criminal justice reform has focused on nonviolent drug offenders,and President Obama has taken up the same cause. Since taking office, he's commuted the sentences of 76 nonviolent drug offenders.
But as John Pfaff, or a professor at Fordham Law School,explains, these inmates are a very small percentage of the American criminal justice system.
While more than half of federal offenders are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes, or the federal system holds only 14 percent of the country's inmates. The other 86 percent are serving time in the state criminal justice system,and more than half of those inmates were sentenced for violent crimes.
Pfaff argues that the U.
S. has a uniquely punitive response to violence and punishment, one that needs reform to reduce mass incarceration.
Source: wnyc.org