and local prisons are more difficult to establish. Duration Many legislatures continually have reduced discretion of judges in both the sentencing process and the determination of when the conditions of a sentence have been satisfied. Determinate sentencing, use of mandatory minimums, and guidelines-based sentencing continue to remove the human element from sentencing, such as the prerogative of the judge to consider the mitigating or extenuating circumstances of a crime to determine the appropriate length of the incarceration. As the consequence of "three strikes laws", the increase in the duration of incarceration in the last decade was most pronounced in the case of life prison sentences, which increased by 83% between 1992 and 2003 while violent crimes fell in the same period. Violent and nonviolent crime In 2016, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes committed in the United States. Over the course of that year, U.S. law enforcement agencies made approximately 10.7 million arrests, excluding arrests for traffic violations. In that year, approximately 2.3 million people were incarcerated in jail or prison. As of September 30, 2009 in federal prisons, 7.9% of sentenced prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes, while at year end 2008 of sentenced prisoners in state prisons, 52.4% had been jailed for violent crimes. In 2002 (latest available data by type of offense), 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails were in prison for violent crimes. Among unconvicted inmates in jails in 2002, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates in 2002 had a current or prior violent offense; 46% were nonviolent recidivists. From 2000 to 2008, the state prison population increased by 159,200 prisoners, and violent offenders accounted for 60% of this increase. The number of drug offenders in state prisons declined by 12,400 over this period. Furthermore, while the number of sentenced violent offenders in state prison increased from 2000 through 2008, the expected length of stays for these offenders declined slightly during this period. Mandatory sentencing for nonviolent crime can lead to life sentences. In 2013, The Week reported that at least 3,278 Americans were serving life sentences without parole for nonviolent crimes, including "cursing at a policeman and selling $10 worth of drugs. More than 80 percent of these life sentences are the result of mandatory sentencing laws." In 2016, about 200,000, under 16%, of the 1.3 million people in state jails,