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Comment by rdimartino | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure your statements about prison time are accurate, at least in the US.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 46.2% of inmates are in for drug offenses[1] and there is definitely disagreement about whether that should be a crime, let alone an extreme crime. Additionally, 78.6% of inmates are serving sentences longer than 5 years[2], which by necessity means that a large portion of those are for drug offenses.

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_sente...

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But only about 10% of prisoners are in Federal custody.

Among those in state prisons, drug possession is about 3% of cases (about equal to DUI plus fraud cases). Other drug charges make up about 10%.

> in state prisons, drug possession is about 3% of cases

You're going to need to source that unbelievably low number.

In my state, drug crimes represent the second largest proportion of prison inmates - a bit fewer than criminal sexual conduct a bit more than homicide: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/Adult%20Prison%20Population%20Summ...

Source is [1], 45k / 1290k for drug possession (and nothing harder), plus 145k for other drug charges (which I guess is closer to 11% not 10% as I said).

Minnesota's 17% isn't that far off the national number it seems. They don't give a breakdown for simple possession. Violent crimes at 55% are again a majority.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

What percentage of those drug offenses are usage vs distribution?

If I had, let's say, less than $1000 worth of drugs - enough for a few weeks of personal consumption, but on occasion I sell a bit to one of my buddies. Does that make me a "distributor"? It did according to the law.

You're unlikely to find any realistic statistics on usage vs "distribution" due to that.

That's a good point, I'd like to see some research into that question.

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