Emails, Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., research analyst, The Sentencing Project, July 20-21, 2016
9:18 a.m.
July 20, 2016
First, here's the citizenship profile of the federal prison population, showing that 22% of people in federal prisons are not US citizens. We don't have data on how many are undocumented but we can see that Rep. Smith's figure is too high. Moreover, it's important to recognize that many of these people are in the federal system for immigration violations, rather than drug or other more serious convictions.
The USSC data to which you were referred is based on admissions counts, rather than the profile at one point in time (BOP data above does that). Admissions data better reflect people going in for shorter sentences and so people with immigration violations (who are most likely to be undocumented) are more heavily represented here. This way of looking at the federal prison population therefore reveals a higher non-citizen count (42%). It also shows that over half of non-citizens entering federal prisons in 2014 were sentenced under immigration offenses; almost 9 in 10 of those were for "Unlawful Entering or Remaining in the United States." See the attached table from USSC. If you exclude those admitted for immigration violations, then 17% of people entering federal prisons in 2014 were non-citizens (and again, we don't know what proportion were undocumented).
Nazgol
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Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D.
Research Analyst
The Sentencing Project
Washington, D.C.
9:24 a.m.
One last thing -- it could be useful to have broader context of the total US prison population, and not just the federal system (which has 14% of US prisoners.). Among all US prisoners -- those in state and federal prisons -- 4% are non-citizens (see appendix table 6 here).
Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D.
Research Analyst
The Sentencing Project
8:01 a.m.
July 21, 2016
Is the statement that you're fact-checking from here?
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Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D.
Research Analyst
The Sentencing Project