4 ms·

The number of people incarcerated on marijuana possession charges alone is a rounding error. This page suggests 0.1%: http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resource

by wahern 6y ago

The number of people incarcerated on marijuana possession charges alone is a rounding error. This page suggests 0.1%: http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-myths-get-the-facts/60-what-percent-of-state-prisoners-are-being-held-for-marijuana-possession-only http://www.therecoverycenter.org/resources/weed-through-the-... I'm not sure to what extent that's a political advocacy organization, so let's just call 0.1% a lower bound. The absolute upper bound is ~5%: https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 https://twitter.com/JohnFPfaff/status/985996204986241026 But that assumes that everyone arrested for marijuana possession (even if it was only one of the charges) was incarcerated. But that's absolutely not the case. Rather, marijuana arrests are almost always pretextual and used to intimidate; basically, catch & release. There sure are a ridiculous number of arrests, though, and these days having any kind of arrest on your record can be a significant handicap.

Teever 6y ago
I think you misunderstand the impetus for freeing the people arrested for breaking marijuana laws. It isn't just to reduce crowding in jails -- it's to free people who were arrested and imprisoned under an unjust and insane law.
- wahern 6y ago
  Sure, even if it's a merely a fraction of the prison population, the sheer human cost of those remaining in prison is incalculable. Still, from a public policy point of view at some point it sort of becomes indistinguishable from the background population of those unjustly incarcerated for myriad other reasons, and trotting out rare examples of long-term marijuana possession prisoners confuses the debate. We're like 15 years into marijuana decriminalization--actual decriminalization at the state and even Federal level, not simple advocacy. It became a mostly bipartisan endeavor, at least on the national level since at least 2015 when Paul Ryan became Speaker. Though for various reasons most of the GOP remain non-committal, and will only tacitly support passive decriminalization. Nonetheless, that's at least 15 years of slowly emptying our prisons of not only marijuana offenders, but drug offenders generally. The state of affairs today is nothing like the numbers that advocates were throwing around 15 years ago (and what most people still believe is the case), and even then they were exaggerated. There's still a ton more that needs to be done, and some reforms even need to be walked back or reverted because it turns out decriminalization alone exposes some serious problems and deficiencies elsewhere in the system. But if everybody's empathy is focused on the de minimis incarceration problem it's difficult to regroup and shift efforts.
seibelj 6y ago
If we free people for marijuana possession and sale why not free people for cocaine possession and sale? And so on.
- Clewza313 6y ago
  Why not indeed? But realistically we need to go one step at a time and keep pushing the Overton window.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Who would build our furniture and make our clothes then?
- 3131s 6y ago
  Yes, it is essential that we legalize cocaine and many other recreational drugs.
- esperent 6y ago
  Exactly, now you're getting it. Certainly all people jailed for personal possession of any kind of drug and all small scale dealers should be pardoned and dealt with by social workers instead, or simply allowed to live their lives unharassed.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    Another thought comes to mind (which I mention just for novelty's sake): even if a full rational analysis says that taking, say, heroin is a bad idea (for pretty much anyone who plans to live for more than a year, or whatever), it seems legalization should open the door to people tweaking the formula to come up with something with similar positive effects and fewer drawbacks. It seems to me that a great way to get people to stop taking dangerous drugs is to make something that's just better and is also less dangerous. I've read a few things over the years saying that medical and psychiatric researchers (all but the bravest) have absolutely avoided doing anything remotely connected to the illegal drugs because of fear; given marijuana's use in pain management, and more recent results about psychedelics being possibly useful to treat depression and PTSD, this has probably set back research by years, possibly decades.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
First, those sources are terrible. The first is a single treatment center, with an obvious bias, that provides zero methodology. The second at least seems like a decent authority, but provides no reason to believe his statement. Second, the actual number of people in for marijuana far outnumbers those charged with possession. Both sources ignore those arrested for "drug trafficking" violations which would still be misdemeanors at best under the new laws, neither considers what various three strike laws have done, and god knows how many people took a plea for something not labeled possession.
- nickff 6y ago
  I am the last person to ask for a citation, but you are responding to a comment which provided one, so your lack thereof does hurt your credibility. I would be very interested to know what the numbers are for each of the instances you claim, as well as how many of those people were only charged with marajuana offences. It is very common for people to be charged with drug and violent crimes, but 'plead out' of the violent crimes; these people would likely have been jailed/imprisoned for the latter crimes alone (though perhaps for less time).
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    >I am the last person to ask for a citation, but you are responding to a comment which provided one, so your lack thereof does hurt your credibility. I don't think I need a citation to show that those sources are terrible. I never claimed to know how many people are actually locked up.
    - mod 6y ago
      If it's not terribly easy to refute the claims with a reliable source, then yeah, you probably need a citation.
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        I would need a citation if I was saying the figures they claim are wrong. I'm saying they provide no detail on how they got those figures, have clear monetary interest, and are only presenting a portion of the people in jail for marijuana charges. My "source" is reading the sources the poster provided.
elif 6y ago
What about all the people who are harassed and/or killed in situations where cops would otherwise have no reason to? What about the extreme race disparity in who is charged with marijuana+other crimes? Your dubious metric, if true, does not capture the essence of the problem.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
Even take it at face value .1% of 2.3 million people incarcerated is 2000 people. Then you have to consider the number of people who get criminal charges on the record and face employment issues in the future because of it
- adventured 6y ago
  Even if we pretend it's such a low number (which it's obviously not), the even bigger problem with marijuana criminalization laws is the terror they cause. They terrorize the population, literally. It's government tyranny flat out. It's unjust, it's evil, it's cruel to torture your citizens that way, that they should have to live in fear when they're not harming other people. The politicians that produced and executed the war on drugs across decades are all vile bastards, on both sides of the political spectrum. Anyone involved should never be allowed to hold elected office, and that includes the current President.
  - drran 6y ago
    Why not just smoke something else?
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      The burden should be on the government to have moral reasoning for incarcerating people. As long as they aren’t harming others, people should not have to change their behavior to avoid incarceration
      - drran 6y ago
        Government has moral reasoning - it's for public good. Narcotics are harming other people. Marijuana was first banned in XIII century.
ModernMech 6y ago
When talking about the prison population in America, keep in mind that America has the largest prison population in the world both in absolute numbers and per capita. So when you talk about the percentage of people locked up for X is small, this is skewed by the vast amount of people we lock up in general. If X is small compared to the prison population as a whole, it may still be an awful lot of people.

by wahern 6y ago

Teever 6y ago

I think you misunderstand the impetus for freeing the people arrested for breaking marijuana laws. It isn't just to reduce crowding in jails -- it's to free people who were arrested and imprisoned under an unjust and insane law.

wahern 6y ago
Sure, even if it's a merely a fraction of the prison population, the sheer human cost of those remaining in prison is incalculable. Still, from a public policy point of view at some point it sort of becomes indistinguishable from the background population of those unjustly incarcerated for myriad other reasons, and trotting out rare examples of long-term marijuana possession prisoners confuses the debate. We're like 15 years into marijuana decriminalization--actual decriminalization at the state and even Federal level, not simple advocacy. It became a mostly bipartisan endeavor, at least on the national level since at least 2015 when Paul Ryan became Speaker. Though for various reasons most of the GOP remain non-committal, and will only tacitly support passive decriminalization. Nonetheless, that's at least 15 years of slowly emptying our prisons of not only marijuana offenders, but drug offenders generally. The state of affairs today is nothing like the numbers that advocates were throwing around 15 years ago (and what most people still believe is the case), and even then they were exaggerated. There's still a ton more that needs to be done, and some reforms even need to be walked back or reverted because it turns out decriminalization alone exposes some serious problems and deficiencies elsewhere in the system. But if everybody's empathy is focused on the de minimis incarceration problem it's difficult to regroup and shift efforts.

seibelj 6y ago

If we free people for marijuana possession and sale why not free people for cocaine possession and sale? And so on.

Clewza313 6y ago
Why not indeed? But realistically we need to go one step at a time and keep pushing the Overton window.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
Who would build our furniture and make our clothes then?
3131s 6y ago
Yes, it is essential that we legalize cocaine and many other recreational drugs.
esperent 6y ago
Exactly, now you're getting it. Certainly all people jailed for personal possession of any kind of drug and all small scale dealers should be pardoned and dealt with by social workers instead, or simply allowed to live their lives unharassed.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Another thought comes to mind (which I mention just for novelty's sake): even if a full rational analysis says that taking, say, heroin is a bad idea (for pretty much anyone who plans to live for more than a year, or whatever), it seems legalization should open the door to people tweaking the formula to come up with something with similar positive effects and fewer drawbacks. It seems to me that a great way to get people to stop taking dangerous drugs is to make something that's just better and is also less dangerous. I've read a few things over the years saying that medical and psychiatric researchers (all but the bravest) have absolutely avoided doing anything remotely connected to the illegal drugs because of fear; given marijuana's use in pain management, and more recent results about psychedelics being possibly useful to treat depression and PTSD, this has probably set back research by years, possibly decades.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

First, those sources are terrible. The first is a single treatment center, with an obvious bias, that provides zero methodology. The second at least seems like a decent authority, but provides no reason to believe his statement. Second, the actual number of people in for marijuana far outnumbers those charged with possession. Both sources ignore those arrested for "drug trafficking" violations which would still be misdemeanors at best under the new laws, neither considers what various three strike laws have done, and god knows how many people took a plea for something not labeled possession.

nickff 6y ago
I am the last person to ask for a citation, but you are responding to a comment which provided one, so your lack thereof does hurt your credibility. I would be very interested to know what the numbers are for each of the instances you claim, as well as how many of those people were only charged with marajuana offences. It is very common for people to be charged with drug and violent crimes, but 'plead out' of the violent crimes; these people would likely have been jailed/imprisoned for the latter crimes alone (though perhaps for less time).
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >I am the last person to ask for a citation, but you are responding to a comment which provided one, so your lack thereof does hurt your credibility. I don't think I need a citation to show that those sources are terrible. I never claimed to know how many people are actually locked up.
  - mod 6y ago
    If it's not terribly easy to refute the claims with a reliable source, then yeah, you probably need a citation.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      I would need a citation if I was saying the figures they claim are wrong. I'm saying they provide no detail on how they got those figures, have clear monetary interest, and are only presenting a portion of the people in jail for marijuana charges. My "source" is reading the sources the poster provided.

elif 6y ago

What about all the people who are harassed and/or killed in situations where cops would otherwise have no reason to? What about the extreme race disparity in who is charged with marijuana+other crimes? Your dubious metric, if true, does not capture the essence of the problem.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

Even take it at face value .1% of 2.3 million people incarcerated is 2000 people. Then you have to consider the number of people who get criminal charges on the record and face employment issues in the future because of it

adventured 6y ago
Even if we pretend it's such a low number (which it's obviously not), the even bigger problem with marijuana criminalization laws is the terror they cause. They terrorize the population, literally. It's government tyranny flat out. It's unjust, it's evil, it's cruel to torture your citizens that way, that they should have to live in fear when they're not harming other people. The politicians that produced and executed the war on drugs across decades are all vile bastards, on both sides of the political spectrum. Anyone involved should never be allowed to hold elected office, and that includes the current President.
- drran 6y ago
  Why not just smoke something else?
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    The burden should be on the government to have moral reasoning for incarcerating people. As long as they aren’t harming others, people should not have to change their behavior to avoid incarceration
    - drran 6y ago
      Government has moral reasoning - it's for public good. Narcotics are harming other people. Marijuana was first banned in XIII century.

ModernMech 6y ago

When talking about the prison population in America, keep in mind that America has the largest prison population in the world both in absolute numbers and per capita. So when you talk about the percentage of people locked up for X is small, this is skewed by the vast amount of people we lock up in general. If X is small compared to the prison population as a whole, it may still be an awful lot of people.