Carly Fiorina is a rising star in the Republican Party and there is much to like about her, in my view. But she made a big blunder last night when she said that two-thirds of America's prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent offenses, most of them involving drugs. As Slate Magazine commendably shows, the truth is vastly different:
Any meaningful sentencing "reform" in the United States is going to entail the release of thousands of violent offenders. There is simply no use (except political use) in denying this fact. Given the sky-high recidivism rate of such offenders (slightly over 70%), we need to ask ourselves whether this is a road we want to start down, no matter how benignly the first step is portrayed.The reason Fiorina's misstatement matters is that it makes it seem like ending mass incarceration will be a lot easier than it actually will be. She is far from alone in perpetuating this idea--President Obama has done it too, along with just about every other mainstream politician who has expressed support for criminal justice reform in recent years. But the truth is that if we want to significantly reduce the prison population, politicians have to be willing to make the criminal justice system less harsh toward violent offenders in addition to nonviolent ones, or at least rethink how we define the two categories.
UPDATE: I now see that Kent and Steve have covered much the same ground, so I have deleted some repetitive material that was in my original post.
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