For much of the last five years, Democrats have been trying to sell us all on the idea that our prisons are filled with low-level criminals that should be freed.
A new report, however, blows that narrative right out of the water.
The report comes via the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and it is devastating for the liberal horde.
Just Wrong
I can go back to 2018, with then-presidential candidate and Senator, Elizabeth Warren, stating, “more people [are] locked up for low-level offenses on marijuana than for all violent crimes in this country.”
AOC has railed that our prisons are filled with people that got “stopped with a dime bag.”
Both statements are just blatantly false.
The BJS reports show “only 12.6% of state prisoners are behind bars for drug-related crimes and only 3.2% are locked up on possession charges – while five times as many people are in state prisons for violent crimes rather than drug charges.
Zack Smith, a legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, stated, “If you listen to people on the left, you’d think that everyone who has a joint in their pocket is getting sent to prison for 20 years, which just is not the case.”
Smith and Keith Humphreys, an American psychologist and Esther Ting Memorial professor at Stanford University, stated, It’s been a longtime talking point, particularly around cannabis legalization, to say our prisons are full of pot smokers and nonviolent drug offenders.
“It’s just something that has never been true, certainly for cannabis.
“You can get a night in a jail still for cannabis but going to prison is pretty much impossible anymore, not that it ever was possible.”
Smith also explained that in many cases, those lower-level convictions are the result of a plea deal.
He stated, “For instance, a lot of times if someone is potentially facing possession with intent to distribute charges, which carry much higher penalties … the prosecutor might plead down to simple possession charges in that case.
“So, most of the time, I would suspect that’s what’s going on.”
I know, it is shocking… politicians have been lying to us.
Source: Fox News
