Prison time is less for violent first-time offenders (Bryson)
July 14th, 2008 | Published in Morality, Quotes, Politics
According to a 1990 study, 90 percent of all first-time offenders in federal courts were sentenced to an average of five years in prison. Violent first-time offenders, by contrast, were imprisoned less often and received on average just four years in prison.
You are, in short, less likely to go to prison for kicking an old lady down the stairs than you are for being caught in possession of a single dose of any illicit drug.
—Bill Bryson, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books: 1999), p. 90.