| | As of 2003 (last time fed figures were updated online), 27.5% of state prison inmates were behind bars due to drug offenses.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corrtyptab.htm
The vast majority of that number are there, not for smoking a joint or private consumption, but for sale, manufacturing, and trafficking. In other words, they are the pros in the drug culture.
Should any of that be illegal? No, of course not. But let's remember that we're not necessarily dealing with choir boys, either.
We'd better put things in perspective. It's quite hard to get into a state prison. You usually really have to work at it, for years, because the system gives you endless and repeated "second chances." And the rap sheets of the vast number of inmates, including drug criminals, contain a variety of crimes, many serious by any measure. Most chronic criminals aren't specialists; they're generalists who respond to situational opportunities. They do violent crime, property crime, AND victimless "crime." Often, cops charge violent or property criminals with drug crimes or "morals" offenses simply because they may not have quite enough on the guys to make more serious charges stick.
Remember Al Capone, a killer and thug who made his money from bootleg liquor and was brought down for income-tax evasion! Richard Allen Davis, the predator who killed little Polly Klaas, had a rap sheet that included everything from animal torturing, petty theft, kidnappings, carjackings, selling dope, burglary, violent assaults on women, probation violations, weapons violations -- you name it. If a D.A. and judge, seeing that rap sheet, had nailed the bastard for spitting on the sidewalk, I would've shed no tears, because a beautiful little girl might still be alive. Or check the rap sheets of the West Virginia low-lifes who were arrested this week for torturing that black girl.
Ted has noted that Rudi Giuliani cleaned up the streets of NYC. Do you know how? His police chief, Bratton, went after petty criminals -- vandals, subway turnstile-jumpers, "squeegie" men, disruptive vagrants. Guess what? When they picked up those people, they found that many of them were parole and probation violators who'd been convicted of serious crimes, or who had outstanding warrants for nasty stuff. By rounding up "the usual suspects" for "petty" crime, they actually found and took a huge number of serious criminals off the streets. And the crime rate plunged.
When I did an investigative piece on homelessness for Reader's Digest, I ran into people living in shanties along the river and in homeless shelters in Nashville. They panhandled at local tourist hotels for cash, dealt pot. Victimless stuff, right? I asked what they did when they didn't get enough money. They shoplifted, said my "homeless" informant. That guy had just been recently paroled from state prison after serving a stretch for murder. "I had to cap a man," he chuckled.
So, no, there are very few state prison inmates for whom I shed tears. The alleged "first-time victimless-crime offenders" who are supposed to be clogging the system are largely mythical creatures. Sure, there is a minority who have been railroaded, or who otherwise shouldn't be there. But the overwhelming majority in state joints should be.
Only in the (much smaller) federal prison system do you find relatively high percentages of people who are "white-collar" criminals, often sent up for tax evasion, drug crimes, etc.
The moral: Repealing victimless-crime laws -- which of course we SHOULD do -- isn't going to have as huge an impact on prison populations as most libertarians and liberals like to think. We can easily fill the cells they depart from the ranks of several MILLION probationers and parolees who committed violent and property crimes, but who are now roaming the streets.
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I am certainly not error free myself - and spell check would not have helped in this case.