In fact, I fear I am a jack-of-all-trades.

[In fact, I fear I am a jack-of-all-trades.]

[humansofnewyork]

(4/4) “When Donald finally got caught, they offered him a plea deal so I wouldn’t have to go to jail. But he refused it. He told my cousin: ‘If I can’t have her, nobody will.’ They arrested me at the courthouse on the same day Donald refused his deal. The public defender told me to sign a plea bargain. He told me no jail time. But at the sentencing, I heard the judge mention jail and I panicked. When the judge asked me if I’d been promised anything in exchange for the deal, I said: ‘Yes!’ The prosecutor was so mad. She thought I made her look bad. She pushed for a life sentence at trial. The jury never heard about the abuse. They only heard about the drugs. They didn’t realize that the true victims were me, my children, and my brother. I’ve been in prison for twenty years now. But this has a happy ending. And I swear, when I agreed to this interview, I didn’t even know this yet. But President Obama just granted me clemency. And I’m going home.”

(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)

[In fact, I fear I am a jack-of-all-trades.]

[nonnegative]

America’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded, and the war on drugs is mainly to blame.

Over 50 percent of inmates currently in federal prison are there for drug offenses, according to an infographic recently released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (see chart below). That percentage has risen fairly consistently over decades, all the way from 16 percent in 1970.

The second-largest category, immigration-related crimes, accounts for 10.6 percent of inmates. This means that people convicted of two broad categories of nonviolent crimes — drugs and immigration — make up over 60 percent of the U.S. prison population.