Are there many small-time dealers in prison who were convicted on conspiracy charges?
There are very few people in jails today in the United States [who] didn’t deal in large quantities of the drugs. You’ve got people who are involved in major drug dealing who are the vast, vast majority of those who are in our prisons today … . Occasionally you’ll run into somebody that’s in there on a conspiracy charge because that’s the easiest way to get them convicted, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t convicted multiple offenses. They’re violent offenders with a long track record–look at their histories. When they put out the statistics that seem to show these poor innocent people who are involved, they’re not poor innocent people. They’re people who have long histories and the judges have probably sentenced them to long sentences in large measure, or they’re getting the minimum mandatories because they are repeat, multiple offenders. There are very few people out there who [did not have substantial] drug trafficking histories before they were ever put away, and for those that
