Who is in prison?
The Schumer hearing led to heated discussion over the number of "true" non-violent offenders serving mandatory sentences in the federal prison system. Schumer argued that there were few offenders who met the definition of a non-violent offender and requested data from the sentencing commission to verify the numbers. But the way in which Schumer posed the question to the commission and his definition of "nonviolent" skewed the data, resulting in a much lower number of nonviolent offenders than believed to be serving mandatory sentences.19
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno then ordered the Department of Justice to research how many nonviolent drug offenders are serving mandatory sentences. The department's report, "An Analysis of Non-Violent Drug Offenders with Minimal Criminal Histories," found that more than one in five federal prisoners (21.5 percent) are low-level drug offenders with no record of violence, no involvement in sophisticated criminal activity, and no prior prison record.20
Of federal drug offenders, 36.1 percent met the department's criteria for low-level offenders. Couriers, or those who play peripheral roles in drug trafficking, comprised 42.3 percent of the petty offenders. The report noted that long sentences "do serve important criminal justice goals such as retribution and incapacitation," but found that they "may diminish the value of long sentences for crimes considered more serious, such as those involving violence and undermine their deterrent value."