Kudos to Leon Neyfakh of Slate for calling out GOP contender Carly Fiorina on her claim that most inmates in the United States are locked up for non-violent drug offenses.  This frequent quip made by so many so often it has become legend suffers from just one problem - it's dead wrong:

Though Fiorina was correct that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world--no other country comes close--the rest of her statement was false. In fact, when you look at the roughly 1.5 million people currently doing time in state and federal prisons, only about 300,000 of them are there primarily because of drug offenses, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About half the state prison population--which, at 1.3 million people, represents the lion's share of the country's prisoners--is made up of individuals who are classified as violent offenders. (According to research by Fordham Law School professor John Pfaff, the percentage of drug offenders in state prisons peaked in 1990 at 22 percent and has been in decline since--meaning that, even when the percentage of drug offenders in state prisons was at its peak, roughly 4 out of 5 inmates were there due to a non-drug offense.)

Neyfarkh is fond of the idea that the best way to reduce the number of violent offenders is to just redefine what crimes we call violent.  He gives the example of felony murder:

Perhaps the best illustration of how a not-necessarily-violent person can be found guilty of a violent crime involves "felony murder." In many states, you can be convicted of felony murder for having been present when someone you are affiliated with committed a homicide, even if you never touched a weapon, let alone actually killed someone.

Notice how Neyfakh doesn't bother to mention what the underlying felony crime might be in these sorts of cases?   We shouldn't pretend our way out of the reality that most people in prison are there for dangerous behavior.  It's a tragic state of affairs but true.