There are some. But there are also many where people commit other crimes because of drug related debt or money problems that are indirectly drug caused.

But I'd certainly be happy to see 40% of prisons close right there by getting those people out. And if we improved recidivism down from like 70% where it is for some crimes that would be great to see general crime going down too. I don't want fewer people in prison because they are getting away with doing bad things. But I'd certainly welcome a lot more prisons closing because of more reasonable laws with respect to drugs and making prisons actually try to get people to not commit more crimes and come back.

If you're talking about people in prison it is about drugs. That's about 40% of the prisoners is drug related crimes. And yes obviously being high isn't an excuse for another crime. Not sure why you thought I was implying otherwise?

Is that a bad thing? We lock up an insane number of people. Almost half of our prisoners are there for drug related offenses. Not to mention it costs $40k a year per person in addition to them not paying taxes and having a lifelong reduced earning potential.

I'm certainly not saying we should let dangerous and violent people go free. But our prisons should have a purpose of releasing people who don't come back to prison and they fail miserably at that. I'd much prefer we had far fewer prisons.

Yeah that's why we have the most prisoners per capita in the world.

That's not to say there aren't crimes we need to take more seriously, or are often problematic to prove and therefore don't get punished often. But the idea that we don't want to charge anyone with a felony is ridiculous when our prisons are full.