I have criticized media "fact-checker" columns from time-to-time, as they occasionally show political bias and a loose association with the truth themselves. WaPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler gets it right this time, though, with four statements by President Obama and candidates Carly Fiorina, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton.
But the statements ... also reflect a basic misunderstanding of the data on prison populations. We've listed the statements in order, from the least egregious to the most outlandish, to demonstrate how -- almost like a game of telephone -- the facts get increasingly unmoored from the actual data. It's a complex issue, which leads itself to facile explanations.
Here are the statements:
Kessler calls these statements "A bipartisan failure in talking about prisons and the 'war on drugs,'" and so they are. The verdict:
I might quibble with the numbers awarded, but I am delighted to see Kessler and the WaPo calling attention to the rampant dishonesty that has been abroad in this debate.
"Over the last few decades, we've also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. And that is the real reason our prison population is so high."
-- President Obama, remarks at the NAACP Conference, July 14, 2015
"Two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related."
-- businesswoman Carly Fiorina, remarks at the GOP debate, Sept. 16
"We are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana."
-- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), remarks at Democratic debate, Oct. 13
"We have a huge population in our prisons for nonviolent, low-level offenses that are primarily due to marijuana."
-- Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, remarks at debate, Oct. 13
Kessler calls these statements "A bipartisan failure in talking about prisons and the 'war on drugs,'" and so they are. The verdict:
We're going to end up with enough Pinocchios that we could go bowling.
Obama can point to longer prison terms for more drug offenders, at least in terms of raw numbers, but runs into trouble when he says that's the "real" reason for the size of the prison population. He earns One Pinocchio.
Fiorina earns Two Pinocchios because her statement, while correct for federal prisons, was off base for state and federal prisons.
Sanders ends up with Three Pinocchios, having conflated arrests with jail sentences. And Clinton earns Four Pinocchios for the absurd suggestion that prisons are overflowing with marijuana convicts.
I might quibble with the numbers awarded, but I am delighted to see Kessler and the WaPo calling attention to the rampant dishonesty that has been abroad in this debate.
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