>Re the larger topic of this thread, doesn't the US incarceration boom
>have more to do with larger numbers of people being cycled through short
>sentences than with time actually served getting longer?
I just ransacked the BJS site and found only minimal historical data on sentence length. One report showed an increase from 1992 to 1994, but that's hardly enough to draw conclusions from. I suspect it's both - more people being cycled through, and more serving longer sentences. The three strikes stuff is relatively new, and is probably only beginning to show up in the stats.
I've got an email into a BJS statistician begging for more info.
>Along with the drug war (which is a smaller factor than it's sometimes
>made out to be)
Yeah, I was surprised at how low - relatively speaking - the drug share is, as outrageous and stupid as the war on drugs is. In 1996, 26% of prisoners (292,000 of them) were in for drug offenses, and drug convictions were responsible for 29% of the growth in the prison pop from 1990-96. That means the drug share is increasing, but not anywhere near as much as you might expect.
Doug