How Prisoners Make Moonshine

Re:How Prisoners Make Moonshine by tptacek on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @03:00PM (#9035321)

That's federal prison, which houses a small fraction of inmates, and for more serious offenses. You need to look at the state stats. In California, for instance, drug inmates make up about 14% of the prison population. Violent crime makes up 44% (actually, it's probably quite a bit higher than that, because "burglary" is counted as a property crime).

To see why the federal statistics are misleading, consider how someone ends up in federal prison for burglary.

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Re:How Prisoners Make Moonshine by juliangregorian on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @03:17PM (#9035451)

Having experienced it firsthand, I wonder if those numbers don't tell the full story. There are whole families basically going in and out of jail running the drug trade. I never got the sense that violent criminals had quite the "revolving door" effect.

Edit: then again, it's likely that drug offenders would be much more open about what they're doing time for. Now that I think about it there could definitely be positive selection bias (or whatever) affecting my perception.

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Re:How Prisoners Make Moonshine by tptacek on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @03:21PM (#9035477)

Their door revolves too, but because their sentences are longer and parole harder to achieve, it revolves more slowly.

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