jailing the least dangerous

A quarter of the US prison population, about 364,000 inmates, could have been spared imprisonment without meaningfully threatening public safety or increasing crime, according to a new study.

Analyzing offender data on roughly 1.5 million US prisoners, researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice concluded that for one in four, drug treatment, community service, probation or a fine would have been a more effective sentence than incarceration....

The Brennan Center calculates that this could equal a cost saving of $20bn a year, greater than the combined budgets of the US departments of commerce and labor.