What percentage of US prisoners are in prison for drug related offenses?
Category:
news and politics
crime
Fifteen percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious. In comparison, 47% of federal prisoners serving time in September 2016 (the most recent date for which data are available) were convicted of a drug offense.
Keeping this in view, what are most people in prison for?
Statistics
Offense | # of Inmates | % of Inmates |
---|---|---|
Courts or Corrections | 690 | 0.4% |
Drug Offenses | 73,679 | 45.4% |
Extortion, Fraud, Bribery | 9,743 | 6.0% |
Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses | 5,206 | 3.2% |
Keeping this in view, what percentage of the US population is in prison?
Nearly one out of every 100 people in the United States is in a prison or jail. We're often asked what percent of the U.S. population is behind bars. The answer: About 0.7% of the United States is currently in a federal or state prison or local jail.
It's no secret that incarcerating an individual costs the country a lot of money. According to the Vero Institute of Justice, that figure is roughly $31 thousand per state prisoner. From the data of all 40 states surveyed by the Vero Institute, it costs $40 billion per year to house prisoners in those 40 states.