Over the past decade, 18,775 persons have been sentenced as "career offenders". See Booker Report, Part C: Career Offenders, at 75; 2012 Sourcebook, at tbl.22. With an average guideline minimum sentence of 225 months, Booker Report, Part C: Career Offenders, at 75, that is enough inmates to fill 16 prisons like FCI Memphis for close to 20 years. An overwhelming number of persons subject to these lengthy sentences are drug offenders, not violent offenders. 2012 Sourcebook, at tbl. 22 (drug trafficking was the primary offense for 73.5% of defendants sentenced as career offenders); Booker Report, Part C: Career Offenders, at 795. The costs of this incarceration policy are enormous. Career offenders in the past ten years faced a combined minimum sentence of 225,300 years imprisonment at a cost of $6.5 billion in today’s dollars. Id at n.13. That is enough money to pay for substance abuse treatment for 4.1 million people. See, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Fact Sheet: Cost Benefits of Investing Early in Substance Abuse Treatment (2012) (“[o]n average, substance abuse treatment costs $1,583 per patient”), whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/Fact_Sheets/investing_in_treatment_5-23-12.pdf.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 14:20:32 +0000
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