It's no secret that America loves to send people to prison. We have 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners — which is odd for a "land of liberty."

Lately, it has become common to attribute our mass incarceration to the war on drugs. The conversation goes like this: "Why don't we just release the nonviolent drug offenders? That would make so much sense!"

True, but it would not make that big a dent in the number of people sitting in cells, says John Pfaff, a professor of law at Fordham University and author of the new book "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration — and How to Achieve Real Reform." (Book titles keep getting longer, don't they?) Surprisingly, people arrested for drug crimes constitute only about 16 percent of the people in prison. Most of the rest are there for violent crimes. So for Pfaff, the question is:

Should we start releasing the violent criminals, too?

At first blush, this sounds crazy. We need to keep violent offenders off the streets! But one point that Pfaff makes is that "violent offender" is a misleading term. It makes it sound as if there were a class of people who are wired wrong and incorrigible. This is wrong on two counts. First of all, some crimes are labeled "violent" that aren't — for example, breaking in to a house.

But beyond that, some people are labeled "violent" who committed their crime only in the context of one particular situation. "You're in a bad mood. You have a beer. You get in a fight with your friend at the bar and break his jaw," says Pfaff. "If we're trying to minimize future harm, some sort of anger management class might be more effective than prison." But prison has become our knee-jerk response to all violence, even though often this isn't addressing the real problem.

Pfaff cites a current theory that looks at violence as an epidemic. Person A shoots person B. B's friends shoot C. C's brother shoots D. And on it goes. "One study tied 400 shootings back to one initial shooting," says Pfaff.

If we could just stop that chain at the start, so many lives would be saved — and so many fewer people would wind up in a cage. One method shown to work is a program in Boston called Operation Ceasefire. It works like this:

The cops determine which gangs are responsible for the majority of the gun violence. "Then they sit down and meet with those people and kind of give them two choices: 'If you persist in this violence, we will crack down on you as a group, aggressively,'" says Pfaff. But the cops also bring in an array of social workers to help with housing, food, employment, health care. "And they say, 'If you're willing to put this violence behind you, we will help you build a more stable life.' It's called 'focused deterrence.' It's carrot and stick."

A program like this called Cure Violence was introduced in Chicago. "And when the state cut the funding a couple of years ago, that's exactly when the violence in Chicago began its sharp increase," Pfaff says. Somehow, one solitary neighborhood managed to keep its funding. And there, says Pfaff, the crime rate continues going down. This doesn't definitively prove that the program works. "But it's worth a lot more study."

It certainly is. Preventing violence makes more sense than punishing it, every which way you look at it. Putting people behind bars ignores the cost to their families, taxpayers and our sense of America. If we want to make our people safer, locking up violent offenders may not be the key.

Lenore Skenazy is author of the book and blog "Free-Range Kids" and a keynote speaker at conferences, companies and schools. Her TV show, "World's Worst Mom," airs on Discovery Life. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.