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A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot Offenders

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 11:58:30 AM EST
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NORML's Paul Armentano has an op-ed in today's Examiner pointing out that the U.S. is spending $1 billion dollars a year to incarcerate people for marijuana offenses. The figure comes from the latest report released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.

Another $8 billion is spent on arresting them.

Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.

What's the message here?

Marijuana isn’t a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug’s legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot’s relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

If you live in a state where a marijuana reform initiative is on your ballot this year, your vote is needed to end this waste of money.

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Should Adult Personal Use and Possession of Pot Be Legalized
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♦ No 5%
♦ Only for those using it for legitimate medicinal purposes 11%

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    A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot Offenders | 10 comments (10 topical)
    Re: A Billion Dollars a Years (none / 0) (#1)
    by Deconstructionist on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 12:36:32 PM EST
      I think the point  most people make is that very few people are incarcerated for the use of or simple possession of marijuana, not that marijuana growers, smugglers and sellers are not incarcerated.

       I agree that the prohibition of marijuana is dubious and that enforcement of it is not the best use of scarce resources, but the truth is very few people are incarcerated unless they are involved in a lot more than personal use.

    Re: A (none / 0) (#2)
    by Patrick on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 12:40:59 PM EST
    The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses.

    Seriously, can someone link me to this claim?  Because the way I see it, few are incarcerated for simple possession...There are lots of arrests for marijuana sales, cultivation, etc...And I think someone's manipulating the claims made by the groups mentioned above.  

    As an aside:

    Subject is too long (max is 50 characters).
     This is the reason I think I had problems posting comments in the other mj thread.  This subject auto adds to the subject on every post.  

    Re: A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot (none / 0) (#3)
    by roy on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 02:16:30 PM EST
    Not having seen the report, I can only make snarky guesses, but this reveals some shoddy analysis:

    "police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture"

    So let's say you're arrested on two charges: simple possession, and murder.  It seems clear that you get counted as a "possession only " drug arrest in that paragraph.  This tells us nothing about the cost of the drug war, because if we arrest somebody for Crime X + pot, legalizing pot wouldn't necessarily save the expense of arresting him.

    And what does this mean:

    33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses.

    I have a sneaky suspicion that someone serving 30 days for possesion and life for murder gets counted as "behind bars for marijuana offenses" for the rest of his life.

    And I make these criticisms as someone on the record as anti-drug-war.  I'm just more strongly anti-bad-math.

    Re: A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot (none / 0) (#4)
    by roy on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 04:23:15 PM EST
    After leafing through the BOJS reports (PDFs) here, here, and here, and a few other sites, I think the most likely explanation is that prisoners are categorized according to their most serious offense.  So somebody serving time for both violent and drug offenses is called a violent offender.  Somebody serving time for both drug and whatever petty thing is less serious than a drug offense offenses is called a drug offender.

    If this is the case, it makes the reports nearly useless for Armentano's purposes.  They could easily significantly over- or under-estimate the cost of the drug war, depending on how often people with drug convictions have other convictions and what kind.

    This is still speculative; the reports don't actually address the issue.


    [ Parent ]

    Re: A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot (none / 0) (#5)
    by diogenes on Wed Oct 18, 2006 at 09:17:22 PM EST
    The local district attorney here jails pot possession people who have long records or are known on the street to deal/be violent.  Sometimes jury trials in Ithaca are tough (always an anticop juror), and sometimes plea bargains happen.  I work in the county jail, and there are no Sunday School teachers in jail just for possessing a joint.

    One dollar is too much (none / 0) (#6)
    by SeeEmDee on Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 08:26:47 AM EST
    The main point is lost in arguing about the finer details: The entire issue of cannabis prohibition is an enormous waste of taxpayer funds and should be eliminated.

    How many unsolved murders have taken place, how many rapes, child molestations, robberies, burglaries, etc. have yet to be dealt with, while we spend increasingly tighter funds to enforce laws that seek to 'protect' the average citizen from themselves? Don't we have better things to do with that money?

    Re: (none / 0) (#7)
    by Deconstructionist on Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 08:52:10 AM EST
    The policy rationale of marijuana prohibition is certainly dubious. It's neither  "good for you" as the silly end of spectrum suggests nor "harmless" as others imply, but it is demonstrably less dangerous than alcohol, in both acute and chronic terms.

       I've also always believed, based on anectdotal observation, that the prohibition is contrary to what should be the overriding goal of reducing the use of the more dangerous illegal drugs.

      The  "gateway" drug argument is no more true, and probably less true, for marijuana than for alcohol. Most kids do use marijuana prior to anything else, but most probably use alcohol even prior to marijuana.  Also, a large number of people never use a more dangerous drug.

      My theory is to the extent marijuana use correlates to subsequent "hard drug" use it is primarily the result, not of anything inherent about marijuana but  of these factors:

       Precisely because it is necessary to purchase marijuana from the black market, people are exposed to the market for other drugs with which they might noy have contact if marijuana was sold through regulated sellers.

       Because of the false propaganda about marijuana, people who try marijuana and discover it is not what they have been told, make the assumption that what they have been told about other drugs is also exaggerated and are therefore more likely to discount the risks.

       It would seem that disassociating marijuana from more dangerous illegal drugs would make better sense than lumping it in with them.

    Re: Pot Offenders (none / 0) (#8)
    by cpinva on Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 09:30:57 AM EST
    criminalization of pot was based on fraud. it has become a growth penal industry though, and that industry will fight tooth and nail to maintain it. many, many jobs at stake.

    that said, $1b is penny ante, by comparison to the total budget. even $8b is small. the real issue, not commented on, is the "ripple effect" on the rest of society, that incarcerating people, strictly for possession, has: lost jobs, lost families, lost education loans, lost educations, etc.

    i have to wonder, if the public was fully informed of the total costs of making pot criminal, given it's relatively benign status, compared to alcohol, would they still support the prohibition?

    Re: A Billion Dollars a Year (none / 0) (#9)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Thu Oct 19, 2006 at 01:02:23 PM EST
    the real issue, not commented on, is the "ripple effect" on the rest of society, that incarcerating people, strictly for possession,
    My bolds.

    I think several posters have commented above that there is little to no incarceration "strictly for possession."

    Have you other info that shows them to be wrong?

    Re: A Billion Dollars a Year? (none / 0) (#10)
    by JSN on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 05:42:50 PM EST
    The statement that it cost $1billion to incarcerate persons for pot possession is probably not correct. It costs about $25,000 per year for  incarcerated so if you divide $1 billion by $25,000 you get an average daily population of 40,000 or 2% of the average daily population of all US prisons and jais. If we assume they are mostly in jails and we divide by the number of jails we get about 12 persons per jail incarcerated for pot possession which appears to be to high by a factor of more than ten.

    A Billion Dollars a Year Spent on Jailing Pot Offenders | 10 comments (10 topical)