Our Federal Prisons Are Fueled By Drugs

That’s the takeaway from this report by the federal courts and U.S. Sentencing Commission.

To summarize, there are almost 200,000 people in federal prison today, and almost half of them (or 48%) are there for drugs. Almost all of them (93%) are men, and the vast majority are young, minority men. The breakdown is 35% Hispanic, 35% black, and 27% white.

Here are the top five types of cases:

1. Drugs (48%)
2. Guns (19%)
3. Immigration (8%)
4. Child pornography and sex offenses (7%)
5. Major frauds (5.8%)

For fraud cases, the median dollar loss was $800,000, in case you were wondering.

For the drug cases, here’s the breakdown among drugs:

1. Methamphetamine (32.8%)
2. Powder cocaine (24.2%)
3. Crack cocaine (20.9%)
4. Heroin (9.5%)
5. Marijuana (8.4%)

Finally, the report shows how often people are sentenced below, above, or within the range that’s recommended by the federal sentencing guidelines. Here’s a crash course on the guidelines if you want to know how they work.

• Half were sentenced within the guideline range (50.4%)
• A quarter were sentenced below the range with the government’s support (24.7%)
• One-fifth were sentenced below the range without the government’s support (21%)
• Relatively few were sentenced above the guideline range (3.9%)