Just Another Political Post.

[kandrathe]

Hi,
Let's be careful of the inference we make on the basis of this datum.  The cost of everything is going up. ...
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Yes, good point. I'm sure part of the disparity is due to what you describe, but I still hold that incarceration rates and length of terms have risen. And, exponentially with regards to drugs crimes.

As one might expect, the number of people disenfranchised reflects to some extent the number of people involved in criminal activity. But the proportion of the population that is disenfranchised has been exacerbated in recent years by the advent of harsh sentencing policies such as mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws and truth-in-sentencing laws. Although crime rates have been relatively stable, these laws have increased the number of offenders sent to prison and the length of time they serve.

In California, for example, more than 40,000 offenders have been sentenced under the state’s “three strikes” law as of June 1998. As a result of the law, 89 percent of these offenders had their sentences doubled, and 11 percent received sentences of twenty-five years to life. Only one in five of these were sentenced for crimes against persons; two-thirds were sentenced for a nonviolent drug or property crime. Seventy percent of the sentenced offenders were either African American or Hispanic.

The impact of changed sentencing policies is readily apparent from Department of Justice data. For example, persons arrested for burglary had a 53 percent greater likelihood of being sentenced to prison in 1992 than in 1980, while those arrested for larceny experienced a 100 percent increase. The most dramatic change can be seen for drug offenses, where arrestees were almost five times as likely to be sent to prison in 1992 as in 1980. In addition, since the number of drug arrests nearly doubled during this period, the impact was magnified further. Over this same twelve-year period, the rate of incarceration in prisons rose from 139 to 332 per 100,000 U.S. residents. Eighty-four percent of the increase in state prison admissions during this period was due to incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

Human Rights Watch - The sentencing project

And, as far as sane criminals... :) I get your point, but I was trying to draw a distinction between anti-social behavior of choice and sociopathic personality disorders. Or, more simply there are people in our society who knowingly commit crimes by choice, and those who are insane who cannot control their behavior.