During the 1990s and 2000s, an estimated 50 percent of the increase in state prisoners came from those convicted of violent offenses.9 Twenty percent of those serving time for drug charges said they had used a firearm in a previous crime, and 24 percent had a prior conviction for a violent crime, found a 1997 national survey of state prisons.10 It’s true that the share of drug offenders in prison rose from 6.5 to 22 percent between 1980 and 1990, growing from 20,000 in 1980 to nearly 250,000 by 2010.11 And nonviolent drug offenses were as responsible for prison growth in the 1980s as violent
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