Where is 1% of the American adult population?

[kandrathe]

Yes, but what were their 2 prior felonies? The three strikes law goes into effect when you've commited two felonies, felonies aren't minor offenses. The three strikes law is also meant for career criminals as well. If you can't be rehabilitated after two felonies, why should we, the law abiding citizens of the US, keep allowing you to come out and commit further offenses?

"he had been convicted of petty theft, residential burglary, transportation of marijuana, and escape from prison." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockyer_v._Andrade

I disagree with laws, such as this three strikes law, or mandatory minimums which remove imposition of appropriate sentences from the Judicial process. Some notorious cases where given lenient sentences, so like many other laws, we create edicts to control peoples behavior, and in this case judicial discretion. Rather than reform the judiciary, we tie up their hands.

It may be disingenuous to imply, and does the video, that the majority of prisoners are there due to unjust sentences. And, similarly, it may be inaccurate to draw inferences of racial discrimination from the prison populations demographics. The discrimination in the system is in that there are still two Americas. One for urban poor neighborhoods (hoods), and the America that the rest of us experience. Children in the hood are born into one parent homes to mothers with parenting issues, given less parental supervision, and often join gangs before getting to high school age. There is a manifold increase in drug abuse, violence, criminal activity and arrests in the hood. The systems of justice are expedited to manage the increased volume, thus each case gets less attention and the defense attorneys are usually pro-bono, or supplied by the system. The end result is that the hood tends to be place where our children graduate into the prison system. It's almost become a cultural expectation. The injustice exists in that we allow there to be two America's in the first place.