>think of what the racial makeup of prison would look like 5 years after you started giving smarter people lesser sentences due to their lower rates of recidivism (and vice-versa)
The above statement implies that if you let smart people out prison, the racial makeup of prisons would change. This indicates a position of assigning a pretty high correlation to intelligence and race; ie, a prejudice based on ethnicity. Seems pretty clearly racist to me.
