I'm talking about the contribution of ghetto culture. You're a kid. Your dad spends time in prison for drug possession. That impacts your life. That is fallout from the war on drugs.
Ghetto culture and unfair incarceration predates the war on drugs. It's important to address the core problem, not just its symptoms.
You'll have a very hard time finding anyone on HN to take the other side of an argument about ending the drug war. Everyone here agrees with you. The author of the paper agrees with you. Drug prohibition is not a live issue on HN in general.
If you look at the violent crime offenders in the USA, more than 3/4's of them are locked up for "Aggravated Assault".
According to Wikipedia, the definition of Aggravated Assault in the US is:
-an attempt to cause or purposely, knowingly, or recklessly causing bodily injury to another
negligently causing bodily injury to another with a dangerous weapon.[20]
-causing bodily harm by reckless operation of a motor vehicle (vehicular assault).[21]
-threatening another in a menacing manner.[22]
-knowingly causing physical contact with another person knowing the other person will regard the contact as offensive or provocative[23]
-causing stupor, unconsciousness or physical injury by intentionally administering a drug or controlled substance without consent[24]
-purposely or knowingly causing reasonable apprehension of bodily injury in another[25]
-any act which is intended to place another in fear of immediate physical contact which will be painful, injurious, insulting, or offensive, coupled with the apparent ability to execute the act.[26]
If you want to investigate the difference, I suspect you should start there, since that seems to make up the bulk of our incarcerated.
It would be interesting to see how many first time felons had previously lost their job/vehicle/family due to short term stays in county jail (and of course why they were locked up).
