Newsgroups: alt.law-enforcement,talk.politics.guns,dc.general
Subject: Re: Police shooting police
Date: 21 Jan 1994 21:44:19 GMT

[f--r--a] at [agcs.com] (Andrew Ford) writes:
> I heard recently, without attribution to the source, that as many as 60%
> of US prisoners are in for drug related offenses - if anyone has a source
> I'd appreciate it.

I've seen the figure 60.3% in federal prisons, but no cite for it.

Here's something close, courtesy of [Joshua Putnam] at [happy-man.com]:

According to the 1992 Statistical Abstract of the United States,
U.S. District Courts sentenced 29,430 offenders to prison in
1990, for an average sentence of 57.4 months.  Of these, only
1,999 (6.8%) were for violent offenses, receiving an average
sentence of 89.8 months.  There were 13,297 offenders (45%)
sentenced for drug trafficking and manufacturing, receiving an
average sentence of 83.5 months.  Another 457 (1.6%) were
sentenced to an average of 13.1 months for simple drug
possession.  All property crimes added up to 5,775 prisoners
(19.6%) at an average sentence of 22.3 months.  Weapons
violations added 1,802 prisoners (6.1%) at an average of 47.5
months.

Note that these figures are just for Federal courts.  Most
prisoners are actually convicted and sentenced at the state
level, but I don't have numbers for those courts.  As of 1990,
Federal prisons held 20.3 prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents,
up from 9.1 in 1980 and 12.9 in 1960.  State prisons held 274.3
inmates per 100,000 population, up from 130.1 in 1980 and 105.7
in 1960.
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