DC Ponders Inmate Release: Facing a revenue shortfall of $800 million, the Mayor of the District of Columbia is proposing the early release of up to 80% of the criminals in city jails according to a Washington Times story by Gary Emerling.  With DC consistently ranking #1 nationally for its murder and violent crime rates, at least one local Council Member, at large Democrat Phil Mendelson, has some concerns about the effect the proposed releases may have on public safety.  What public safety?  The Mayor must have read the feature article from last Sunday's Parade Magazine, where Virginia Senator Jim Webb laments the size of the U.S. prison population and reports that an increasing number of inmates are going to prison for non-violent crimes.  He also reports on his trip to Japan 25 years ago where he discovered that the ratio of Japanese in prison was far lower than for Americans. The Senator is mistaken about the U.S. inmate population. More than half of the inmates currently in state prisons are there for violent crimes such as rape, robbery, murder and aggravated assault and the incarceration rate of these types of criminals has been increasing.  The remaining so-called non-violent inmate population are mostly habitual felons and drug dealers.  The last time the states decided to explore alternatives to incarceration for their non-violent felons (1966-1980) the national violent crime rate tripled and the homicide rate doubled.  See graph on the jump page. The comparison of incarceration rates in Japan and the U.S. while ignoring their respective crime rates and fundamental cultural differences is remarkably naive.