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Very few people are in prison for simple possession. The American justice system, contrary to most popular sentiment, is quite diversionary. As a percentage, Sw

Very few people are in prison for simple possession. The American justice system, contrary to most popular sentiment, is quite diversionary. As a percentage, Sweden probably has more people in prison for drug possession than America. Most prisoners have been convicted of a violent crime.

bumby 3y ago
I was originally skeptical of this. Based on what I found it seems like incarceration levels are about 1.27x higher for violent crimes. State data: Total violent crimes (2020): 651,800 Non violent crimes (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 141,100/131,600/109,100/6,800. Total=388,600 Federal data: Total violent crimes (2020): 10,547 Non violent crimes: (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 5,950/66,474/58,894/433, Total = 131,751 Combined: Violent crime (2020): 662,347 Non-violent crime (2020): 520,351 With that said, there is massive disparity in federal crimes, where there are almost 7x the sentences for drug crimes compared to violent crimes. But that includes trafficking etc. and can't be characterized as 'simple possession' https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/ https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
as a general rule when one makes statements that go against the common wisdom one should also make some sort of effort at showing the cause for ones arguments, but at any rate here is a stat that says 1 in 5 prisoners are in prison for a drug offense https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. as far as Sweden https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-sentenced-to-imprisonment-by-type-of-crime/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-se... 3237 people in Swedish Prison for drug offenses Sweden has a population of over 10 million so less than 0.03% going by this https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarce... I figure the American rate must be 0.2% It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. on edit: I see Bumby went and got some stats too, to clarify I don't doubt that violent offenses outweigh other offenses, what I doubt is that America does not have a large number of people incarcerated for drug possession.
- gruez 3y ago
  >yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. The same source[1] lists drug possession as 34k of 132k total in state prisons. That suggests only a quarter of the drug offenses are actually for possession, and it's only 3.2% of the overall state prison population. That said, those figures represent the upper bound of of people in prison for possession, because offenses could be pleaded down. [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
- shuckles 3y ago
  > It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. With the caveat that drug offenses include manufacturing, trafficking, and sales: Your data is consistent with my claim: I meant the denominator being the prison population, not the entire population. Sweden has about 8600 people in prison so about 37% of their prison population is in there for "drug offenses", whereas in the United States it's less than 1 in 5 per your Prison Policy citation. Obviously if you treat entire population as the denominator, then any comparison of Swedish and American prisons is useless because we incarcerate a much larger percent of the population. Edit: I realize my original comment said "people" not "proportion of people", but in my defense interpreting it to be people literally is a bit absurd. Sweden's population is about 30x smaller than the United States, so there's no way the counts are comparable! Edit 2: Actually no I did say “As a percentage”. Whew. Next, you can see from this sample of federal prison (table on page 2): though drug offenses were the most serious charge for half of prisoners, only 0.1% was for possession. The rest was for trafficking and sales. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf This data is from 2010, and the United States has undergone a decriminalization revolution since regarding possession, so new prosecutions are even less likely to be possession claims.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    > With the caveat that drug offenses include manufacturing, trafficking, and sales With the caveat to your caveat that "sales" in the US tends to include anything above 1 or 2 doses. I'm no bartender, but I'll still buy beer by the twelve pack.
zlurker 3y ago
> Most prisoners have been convicted of a violent crime. this challenged my conceptions a little bit, while I wasn't blown a way by it, I did expect possession to be a higher percent of the whole. Here are some sources for others who are curious: At yearend 2019 (the most recent year for which state prison offense data are available), 58% of all persons imprisoned by states had been sentenced for violent offenses (710,800 prisoners) [https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf page 28] For the same year, 46,700 people were in prison with the most serious crime being possession. This represents 3.8% of the prison population. However; the above are statistics for STATE prisons. The federal system seems to be murkier, with 46% (67,000~) of inmates being their for drug related reasons. Unlike state breakdowns, drug crimes are differentiated here. If we assume the breakdown between possession and other charges is the same as state levels (a VERY shaky assumption) we'd expect 10% of the federal system to be related to possession. Averaging some of these numbers, it seems that even in a 'worst case scenario' roughly 9% of inmates are in for possession, but more realistically we're looking at around 4%. I expected this to be in the 10-20% range prior to looking into this more deeply, something that isn't helped by the piss-poor dashboards by BOP https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... EDIT: started researching this prior to seeing that others had posted :)
- shuckles 3y ago
  0.1% of federal prisoners in 2012 were in there with possession being the most serious charged crime: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf I would bet good money that rate is even lower now. Many states proceeded with decriminalization campaigns for possession in the meantime, most reasoning from false premises.
Legogris 3y ago
> Sweden probably has more people in prison for drug possession than America. Don't know if you picked Sweden in particular intentionally but they are very much an outlier of their own when it comes to drug-related crime. Simple possession of small quantities for personal use can still have you end up in jail or even prison for up to 6 months. They're still all-in on the War on Drugs.
- shuckles 3y ago
  Outlier in what sense? Oregon is more of an outlier than Sweden. Let’s not even add East Asia to the spectrum of drug policy approaches.

bumby 3y ago

I was originally skeptical of this. Based on what I found it seems like incarceration levels are about 1.27x higher for violent crimes. State data: Total violent crimes (2020): 651,800 Non violent crimes (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 141,100/131,600/109,100/6,800. Total=388,600 Federal data: Total violent crimes (2020): 10,547 Non violent crimes: (property/drug/public order/other) (2020): 5,950/66,474/58,894/433, Total = 131,751 Combined: Violent crime (2020): 662,347 Non-violent crime (2020): 520,351 With that said, there is massive disparity in federal crimes, where there are almost 7x the sentences for drug crimes compared to violent crimes. But that includes trafficking etc. and can't be characterized as 'simple possession' https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population-by-type-of-crime-committed/ https://felonvoting.procon.org/incarcerated-felon-population...

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

as a general rule when one makes statements that go against the common wisdom one should also make some sort of effort at showing the cause for ones arguments, but at any rate here is a stat that says 1 in 5 prisoners are in prison for a drug offense https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2023_drugs.html yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. as far as Sweden https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-sentenced-to-imprisonment-by-type-of-crime/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/534214/sweden-persons-se... 3237 people in Swedish Prison for drug offenses Sweden has a population of over 10 million so less than 0.03% going by this https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarcerated/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/01/16/percent-incarce... I figure the American rate must be 0.2% It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. on edit: I see Bumby went and got some stats too, to clarify I don't doubt that violent offenses outweigh other offenses, what I doubt is that America does not have a large number of people incarcerated for drug possession.

gruez 3y ago
>yes I know a drug offense is not just simple possession but I mean, you didn't try to provide anything for your astounding claims, so I figure I could get the ball rolling here. The same source[1] lists drug possession as 34k of 132k total in state prisons. That suggests only a quarter of the drug offenses are actually for possession, and it's only 3.2% of the overall state prison population. That said, those figures represent the upper bound of of people in prison for possession, because offenses could be pleaded down. [1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html
shuckles 3y ago
> It is not close. Which is what I think most people would predict - that it was not even close. With the caveat that drug offenses include manufacturing, trafficking, and sales: Your data is consistent with my claim: I meant the denominator being the prison population, not the entire population. Sweden has about 8600 people in prison so about 37% of their prison population is in there for "drug offenses", whereas in the United States it's less than 1 in 5 per your Prison Policy citation. Obviously if you treat entire population as the denominator, then any comparison of Swedish and American prisons is useless because we incarcerate a much larger percent of the population. Edit: I realize my original comment said "people" not "proportion of people", but in my defense interpreting it to be people literally is a bit absurd. Sweden's population is about 30x smaller than the United States, so there's no way the counts are comparable! Edit 2: Actually no I did say “As a percentage”. Whew. Next, you can see from this sample of federal prison (table on page 2): though drug offenses were the most serious charge for half of prisoners, only 0.1% was for possession. The rest was for trafficking and sales. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf This data is from 2010, and the United States has undergone a decriminalization revolution since regarding possession, so new prosecutions are even less likely to be possession claims.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  > With the caveat that drug offenses include manufacturing, trafficking, and sales With the caveat to your caveat that "sales" in the US tends to include anything above 1 or 2 doses. I'm no bartender, but I'll still buy beer by the twelve pack.

zlurker 3y ago

> Most prisoners have been convicted of a violent crime. this challenged my conceptions a little bit, while I wasn't blown a way by it, I did expect possession to be a higher percent of the whole. Here are some sources for others who are curious: At yearend 2019 (the most recent year for which state prison offense data are available), 58% of all persons imprisoned by states had been sentenced for violent offenses (710,800 prisoners) [https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p20st.pdf page 28] For the same year, 46,700 people were in prison with the most serious crime being possession. This represents 3.8% of the prison population. However; the above are statistics for STATE prisons. The federal system seems to be murkier, with 46% (67,000~) of inmates being their for drug related reasons. Unlike state breakdowns, drug crimes are differentiated here. If we assume the breakdown between possession and other charges is the same as state levels (a VERY shaky assumption) we'd expect 10% of the federal system to be related to possession. Averaging some of these numbers, it seems that even in a 'worst case scenario' roughly 9% of inmates are in for possession, but more realistically we're looking at around 4%. I expected this to be in the 10-20% range prior to looking into this more deeply, something that isn't helped by the piss-poor dashboards by BOP https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... EDIT: started researching this prior to seeing that others had posted :)

shuckles 3y ago
0.1% of federal prisoners in 2012 were in there with possession being the most serious charged crime: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf I would bet good money that rate is even lower now. Many states proceeded with decriminalization campaigns for possession in the meantime, most reasoning from false premises.

Legogris 3y ago

> Sweden probably has more people in prison for drug possession than America. Don't know if you picked Sweden in particular intentionally but they are very much an outlier of their own when it comes to drug-related crime. Simple possession of small quantities for personal use can still have you end up in jail or even prison for up to 6 months. They're still all-in on the War on Drugs.

shuckles 3y ago
Outlier in what sense? Oregon is more of an outlier than Sweden. Let’s not even add East Asia to the spectrum of drug policy approaches.