What is the breakdown of the felon population by the type of crime committed?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
Jeff Manza, PhD, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, and Associate Director and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, and Christopher Uggen, PhD, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, noted the following statistics in their 2006 book Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy:
The U.S. Department of Justice offers the following statistics in its Criminal Offenders Statistics, accessed on Sept. 12, 2006:
"Half of jail inmates in 2002 were held for a violent or drug offense, almost unchanged from 1996.
Drug offenders, up 37%, represented the largest source of jail population growth between 1996 and 2002.
More than two-thirds of the growth in inmates held in local jails for drug law violations was due to an increase in persons charged with drug trafficking.
Thirty-seven percent of jail inmates were convicted on a new charge; 18% were convicted on prior charges following revocation of probation or parole; 16% were both convicted of a prior charge and awaiting trial on a new charge; and 28% were unconvicted."
The Sentencing Project offers the following data from it's Oct. 2005 factsheet "Facts About Prisons and Prisoners":
"Not all felonies are disqualifying, however: Mississippi's constitution specifically lists the offenses which bring about disenfranchisement. But the ten-infraction list - reproduced on the state voter-registration form - is only the beginning. In their response to our servey, state elections officials listed twenty disqualifying crimes, and in subsequent interviews, have mentioned that there are now twenty-one."
The American Probation and Parole Association offers the following statistics in its Sept. 2000 White Paper report titled "Adult Probation in the United States":
Most Serious Offense of Adult Felons on Probation, 1995
