I was going off what my father had told me years ago when he was the head psychologist at McAlester.
It was hard to find hard numbers or very recent numbers but here they are. Only half of all prisoners are convicted of violent offenses. The other half are property crimes and drugs. In 2000 22% of Federal prisoners were in for drugs, 50.5% of people in state prisons and jails were in for drugs. That was in 2000, I would assume those numbers to be higher today. I didn’t find anything on Oklahoma specifically.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/409/toohigh.shtmlhttp://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/You are correct, trying to find relevant statistics for who is incarcerated is maddening, but I finally did on the ODOC web site. Here's a link to the Sept. 2010 report:
http://www.doc.state.ok.us/newsroom/facts/September%202010%20Facts%20at%20a%20Glance.pdfHere's how to get to the reports if you want to do some poking around:
http://www.doc.state.ok.us/newsroom/faag.htmNon-violent offenses comprise 52.5% of the incarcerated population 47.5% are violent offenses. One metric we don't know is how many non-violent were after a prior violent or simply a habitual thief or multiple drug offenses or negligent homicide attached to alcohol or drug use. I think we can agree that someone who has multiple DUI's or driving impaired on drugs is a threat to public safety.
There's just over 52,000 people in the DOC system. Right at 1/2 are incarcerated. The rest are on community sentencing, parole, or probation, and similar programs I refer to as "out-patient prisoners".
By far distributing a controlled substance is the leading crime at 4400 offenders, or 17.1%. Next is possession or trying to obtain a dangerous substance at 2780 inmates or 10.7%. Assault, robbery, and rape round out the top five offenses of people in the prison system at 6911.
So, nearly 28% of the prison population is there for a drug offense, 10% of the population is essentially users. I'm curious how many on distribution charges were more or less "trumped-up" based on having a large quantity for personal use? I also think we should be taking a closer look at non-violent offenders getting 1 to 3 year sentences for first offenses and see if they can be put on probation instead.
Swake, as far as the three strike rule, I suppose there was some sort of methodology to that when it was crafted but it doesn't leave much room for a judge to be objective in sentencing. I believe the public has a right to be protected from someone who has been busted multiple times for auto theft or burglary but I'm sure it's being misapplied in many cases based on our prison population.
Also of note is are recidivism rate is about 23%