4 ms·

This is a pretty popular item to bring to these discussions. I'd be interested in seeing some actual statistics though as to number of those incarcerated for m

This is a pretty popular item to bring to these discussions. I'd be interested in seeing some actual statistics though as to number of those incarcerated for marijuana-related crimes. I'm not questioning one way or the other, but I'd like to see some statistics to better understand this.

abritinthebay 9y ago
Some simple numbers courtesy of the ACLU[1] "Marijuana arrests now account for over half of all drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana." So that's 7.2 million arrests simply for possession. In 2010 police arrested someone for weed-related things every 37 seconds. However it is important to note that an arrest is not a conviction. Most are fined or are placed into community supervision. About 40,000 inmates of state and federal prison have a current conviction involving marijuana. That's a lot, and there are likely a lot more that ended up in prison due to problems with having an arrest record (that should also be wiped imo) so that is a lower limit but the point is that overall - even without a ton of active prisoners there is still a massive effect of all those arrests. Also it's worth noting that black people are nearly 4 times as likely to be arrested for these things even though usage rates are the same across races. [1] https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers
OrganicMSG 9y ago
I know that this is not a good sample by any means, but from my own life thus far here in the UK as someone with a middle class accent and pale skin tone, who smokes a bit of pot and these days stay out of trouble, however used to get exceedingly drunk and got into numerous stupid drunk incidents in public, I have been held in police station cells 6 times and officially cautioned twice. 2 of the times in the station were alcohol related, everything else is weed from stop and search. One thing to note, as soon as I opened my mouth in each incident, there was no further threat from the police of taking it to court, despite me having no decent legal representation. Sounding posh goes very far with the police here.
iguy 9y ago
I always want to know how many are really in for marijuana, as opposed to this being a plea deal for something else. Since something like 95% of convictions are plea deals, it seems to me that the official charges probably aren't a great guide to this, at all. My example is this: the police want to crack down on a gang, and have some informants. They round up all the foot soldiers, who are standing duty on street corners etc. To put them away on conspiracy charges will be hard work, and will expose informants. But they don't have to -- once the gangsters are scared of having last week's murder pinned on them, they'll sign anything with a few years sentence. And so they get locked up for possession. Anyone have any idea how to get a handle on how big this effect is? While the rest of the thread seems to believe 100% of soft drug convictions are for drugs, it seems equally plausible to me that this could be close to 0%. How would we tell?
- vertex-four 9y ago
  The system should not get to have it both ways - they shouldn’t get to fail to prosecute people for things, then argue that actually everybody should be in prison anyway because of the things they were never convicted of.
  - iguy 9y ago
    OK, but aside from discussing "should", I'd like to find information about "is" first. My impression is that what I describe basically is the system right now. But I'd be interested to find ways to understand better whether this impression is true.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      The argument is that "is" is entirely irrelevant, because as far as anyone is concerned, under the law, these people have been convicted of drug crimes. There is no way to tell, short of actually attempting to convict them of something else, whether they're guilty of something else under the law - and so, following the principles of most sane countries, they're by definition innocent of those other crimes. If the prosecutors wanted to convict them of something else, they should've followed the procedure to do so - to refuse to prosecute and then to claim that people are actually guilty of something they've never been tried for is something dictatorships and fascist states do.
iguy 9y ago
Here's one link, which has 14% of all US prisoners as being drug offenders. Not just marijuana, so that's an upper bound: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offender...
millzlane 9y ago
One interesting thing to look up is the places you can still get a major felony for small amounts less than the amount you're legally allowed to carry in some state.

abritinthebay 9y ago

Some simple numbers courtesy of the ACLU[1] "Marijuana arrests now account for over half of all drug arrests in the United States. Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana." So that's 7.2 million arrests simply for possession. In 2010 police arrested someone for weed-related things every 37 seconds. However it is important to note that an arrest is not a conviction. Most are fined or are placed into community supervision. About 40,000 inmates of state and federal prison have a current conviction involving marijuana. That's a lot, and there are likely a lot more that ended up in prison due to problems with having an arrest record (that should also be wiped imo) so that is a lower limit but the point is that overall - even without a ton of active prisoners there is still a massive effect of all those arrests. Also it's worth noting that black people are nearly 4 times as likely to be arrested for these things even though usage rates are the same across races. [1] https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers

OrganicMSG 9y ago

I know that this is not a good sample by any means, but from my own life thus far here in the UK as someone with a middle class accent and pale skin tone, who smokes a bit of pot and these days stay out of trouble, however used to get exceedingly drunk and got into numerous stupid drunk incidents in public, I have been held in police station cells 6 times and officially cautioned twice. 2 of the times in the station were alcohol related, everything else is weed from stop and search. One thing to note, as soon as I opened my mouth in each incident, there was no further threat from the police of taking it to court, despite me having no decent legal representation. Sounding posh goes very far with the police here.

iguy 9y ago

I always want to know how many are really in for marijuana, as opposed to this being a plea deal for something else. Since something like 95% of convictions are plea deals, it seems to me that the official charges probably aren't a great guide to this, at all. My example is this: the police want to crack down on a gang, and have some informants. They round up all the foot soldiers, who are standing duty on street corners etc. To put them away on conspiracy charges will be hard work, and will expose informants. But they don't have to -- once the gangsters are scared of having last week's murder pinned on them, they'll sign anything with a few years sentence. And so they get locked up for possession. Anyone have any idea how to get a handle on how big this effect is? While the rest of the thread seems to believe 100% of soft drug convictions are for drugs, it seems equally plausible to me that this could be close to 0%. How would we tell?

vertex-four 9y ago
The system should not get to have it both ways - they shouldn’t get to fail to prosecute people for things, then argue that actually everybody should be in prison anyway because of the things they were never convicted of.
- iguy 9y ago
  OK, but aside from discussing "should", I'd like to find information about "is" first. My impression is that what I describe basically is the system right now. But I'd be interested to find ways to understand better whether this impression is true.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    The argument is that "is" is entirely irrelevant, because as far as anyone is concerned, under the law, these people have been convicted of drug crimes. There is no way to tell, short of actually attempting to convict them of something else, whether they're guilty of something else under the law - and so, following the principles of most sane countries, they're by definition innocent of those other crimes. If the prosecutors wanted to convict them of something else, they should've followed the procedure to do so - to refuse to prosecute and then to claim that people are actually guilty of something they've never been tried for is something dictatorships and fascist states do.

iguy 9y ago

Here's one link, which has 14% of all US prisoners as being drug offenders. Not just marijuana, so that's an upper bound: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offender...

millzlane 9y ago

One interesting thing to look up is the places you can still get a major felony for small amounts less than the amount you're legally allowed to carry in some state.