Mass Incarceration for Drug Possession? Not Really.

There is a perception in the United States that prisons are overflowing with otherwise law-abiding citizens who were caught for drug possession alone. While this is true in a minority of cases, the public perception does not mirror reality, as evidenced by this salient statistic:

"(296 People Serving Time in Federal Prisons in the US Whose Most Serious Offense was Possession of a Drug) The US Dept. of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that on Sept. 30, 2012, there were a total of 187,773 people sentenced and serving time in US federal prison for any offense. Of those, 97,214 people (51.8% of the total) had as their most serious charge a drug offense: 96,907 of them for drug trafficking or manufacture (51.6% of the total), 296 for drug possession (0.16% of the total), and 11 for "other"* drug offenses.
(* "Other" includes investing illegal drug profits, operating a commercial carrier under the influence, and drug offenses that involve using the U.S. Postal Service.)"
Source: Sam Taxy, Julie Samuels, and William Adams, Urban Institute. “Drug Offenders in Federal Prison: Estimates of Characteristics Based on Linked Data.” NCJ248648. US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Washington, DC, Oct. 2015, p. 8, Table 8. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5436
https://archive.is/urZI0

The statistic is startling and worth repeating: of 187,773 offenders sentenced for any crime in US federal prisons, only 296 were imprisoned with mere possession as their primary offense; it goes without saying that this ratio will differ for state prisons. I must reiterate: this statistic is not indicative of the number of prisoners in state prisons convicted for drug possession alone.
For the vast majority of offenders in federal prison, an additional charge of drug possession would merely extend their overall sentence, not be the primary cause for their incarceration. If a federal offender commits a grievous crime and is given a lengthier sentence as a result of being under the influence of or in the possession of drugs at the time of his arrest, whether or not this is preferable is a matter of perspective, but that lengthened sentence would disappear if drugs were decriminalized. If you would prefer that violent offenders receive lengthier sentences, enforcing drug offenses is one of the most common ways that is done in practice, and in some cases where evidence is scant, violent offenders may compromise with prosecutors and plead down to a lesser drug charge. Given that recidivism is exceptionally common in the United States ("Within five years of release, about three-quarters (76.6 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested." https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx) there is legitimate reason to favor lengthier sentencing until the effectiveness of attempts at rehabilitation can be clearly demonstrated on a smaller scale. Such an assessment will sound harsh to those who assume that rehabilitation can be massively successful without evidence, such optimistic assumptions contrast with the substantial evidence that serious attempts at education (i.e. rehabilitation) can not solve the immense problem of recidivism:
"Over 9 in 10 State prisons provided educational programs for their inmates"
"Half of State prison inmates reported they had participated in an educational program since their most recent admission to prison" (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf)
Those advocating a policy of decriminalization should consider a compromise agreement to increase mandatory and maximum sentencing for crimes where there is a clear victim, instead of ignoring the danger that recidivist offenders have been demonstrated to pose to the public.
If there was a 75% chance that dogs rescued from blood sports will bite the first person they can, it would be prudent to confirm that the specific methods of rehabilitation proposed were successful in some dogs before releasing all of the ones on hand, and irresponsible to release them on faith that attempts at rehabilitation were successful; though this analogy is obviously centered around the risk of release, and not the moral status of those imprisoned, someone will be sure to take righteous offense at the reference to dogs in an analogy regarding the treatment of prisoners.

When considering state or local offenders as well, the enormous numbers of otherwise peaceful offenders imprisoned for possession alone fail to materialize:
"According to a federal survey of jail inmates, of the total 440,670 jail inmates in the US in 2002, 112,447 (25.5%) were drug offenders: 48,823 (11.1%) for possession and 56,574 (12.8%) for trafficking."
Source: Karberg, Jennifer C. and Doris J. James, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Substance Dependence, Abuse, and Treatment of Jail Inmates, 2002" (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, July 2005), Table 7, p. 6.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/sdatji02.pdf
https://archive.is/urZI0#selection-2511.1-1366.49
This is evidence that on both the federal and state level, those actually imprisoned for drug possession represent a small minority, and those imprisoned for that crime alone an even smaller minority.



It is impossible to emphasize how important it is to look at imprisonment instead of conviction. The popular narrative is that there are massive numbers of Americans *imprisoned* for drug offenses alone, those advocating decriminalization bemoan the alleged mass incarceration of drug offenders, not the mass "arrest, fine, and release". **Data on arrests IS NOT data on convictions.** As evidence for "mass incarceration", claims like "Police arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes — combined" are presented (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/12/police-arrest-more-people-for-marijuana-use-than-for-all-violent-crimes-combined/?utm_term=.977329e451e5). As was already proven, only 25.5% of all inmates in the US in 2002 were drug offenders, decades into the drug war, and less than half of them for possession, and this does not even tell us the number of inmates who were imprisoned for possession alone. Americans are much less likely to be imprisoned for a minor drug charge than a violent crime, this explains the disparity between arrests and convictions for drug offenses.

Remember the statistic that only 296 of federal offenders were imprisoned for possession as their primary charge? Statistics can be abused, and everyone should be wary of the potential for intentional misrepresentation of the facts on both sides of the debate:
"(Number of People Serving Time in Federal Prison in the US, by Offense) "Almost 50% (92,000 prisoners) of sentenced federal prisoners on September 30, 2015 (the most recent date for which federal offense data are available) were serving time for drug offenses (table 10) (appendix table 6). An additional 36% of federal offenders (67,500 prisoners) were imprisoned for public order offenses, including 30,200 (16% of all federal prisoners) for weapons offenses and 14,900 (8%) for adjudicated immigration crimes. While 53% of sentenced state prisoners were serving time for violent offenses, 7% of federal prisoners (13,700 prisoners) were serving sentences for violent crimes."
Source: Source: E. Ann Carson, PhD, and Elizabeth Anderson. Prisoners In 2015. Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2016, NCJ250229, p. 15. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5869 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf
https://archive.is/urZI0
This statistic states a fact, that 92,000 prisoners were sentenced for "drug offenses", it does not address the fact that only 0.16% of total offenders had possession as their primary charge. This statistic, if presented on its own, would lead the vast majority of readers to the false conclusion that mere possession was the primary cause of imprisonment for most of the 92,000 federal prisoners sentenced for "drug offenses." Accurate statistics do not always present an accurate view of reality. Vague statistics are the enemy of clarity.



Citing directly from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' website:
"In 2004, 17% of state prisoners and 18% of federal inmates said they committed their current offense to obtain money for drugs."
The highest figure was that 30.3% of property offenders in state prisons committed their offense for drug money, again, the average being 17% and 18% for state and federal prisons, respectively; given that this relied on self surveys of criminals, the numbers may be under reported.
Infamously, Eric Garner died during an arrest for illegally selling cigarettes in New York, which heavily taxes tobacco products. Significant taxes and regulations of any drug after legalization would result in the continued existence of a black market, albeit on a smaller scale, proportionally smaller with the ease of acquiring the drug legally. If an addict has no money to acquire a drug that could be acquired legally, the temptation towards a black market and towards other crime to fund the addiction would not disappear, and the proportion of prisoners committing crimes to obtain drug money would therefore show significant consistency.

"According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in 2007, there were 5.2 million violent victimizations of residents age 12 or older. Victims of violence were asked to describe whether they perceived the offender to have been drinking or using drugs. About 26% of the victims of violence reported that the offender was using drugs or alcohol."
Note that the victims also had an option to respond "don't know", which was the most frequent response by surveyed victims.
"Overall 41% of violent crimes committed against college students and 38% of nonstudents were committed by an offender perceived to be using drugs, 1995-2000. About 2 in 5 of all rape/sexual assaults and about a quarter of all robberies against a college student were committed by an offender perceived to be using drugs."
The self-reporting of drug usage by criminals during the commission of crimes was greater than the confirmed perception of drug usage from victims surveyed in the NCVS:
"In the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 32% of state prisoners and 26% of federal prisoners said they had committed their current offense while under the influence of drugs."
For specific on which drugs were involved with crime:
"A third of the parents in state prison reported committing their current offense while under the influence of drugs. Parents were most likely to report the influence of cocaine-based drugs (16%) and marijuana (15%) while committing their crime. About equal percentages of parents in state prison reported the use of opiates (6%) and stimulates (5%) at the time of their offense, while 2% used depressants or hallucinogens."
This information should lead to skepticism of the notion that marijuana encourages docility, and grants credence to the idea that cocaine should not be considered a safer drug than marijuana.

The perception that drug laws exist solely to arbitrarily imprison nonwhites is also undermined by other data:
"More than two-thirds of local jail inmates (68%) were found to be dependent on drugs or alcohol or abusing them, according to a 2002 survey of men and women held in local jails... 78% of white, 64% of black, and 59% of Hispanic inmates were dependent on drugs or alcohol or abusing them."

"In 2002, jail inmates convicted of robbery (56%), weapons violations (56%), burglary (55%), or motor vehicle theft (55%) were most likely to have reported to be using drugs at the time of the offense."
https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/duc.cfm



"Violent offenders represented more than half (54%) of the sentenced male state prisoners. More than a third (36%) of female prisoners were violent offenders. Eighteen percent (223,700) of male state prisoners and 28% (26,000) of females were sentenced for property offenses. Twenty-five percent of female state prisoners (23,500 females) and 15% of male state prisoners (182,700 males) were sentenced for drug offenses.
Source: E. Ann Carson, PhD, and Elizabeth Anderson. Prisoners In 2015. Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, Dec. 2016, NCJ250229, p. 14 (state) and p. 15 (federal).
https://archive.is/urZI0

Although an older source, it is worth noting:
"In 1997, the year for which the most recent data are available, just 1.6 percent of the state inmate population were held for offenses involving only marijuana, and less than one percent of all state prisoners (0.7 percent) were incarcerated with marijuana possession as the only charge, according to the U.S. Department  of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)"
https://archive.is/urZI0
This statistic is more plausible when you remember that only 11.1% of all US inmates are imprisoned for possession, when you narrow the scope to all state prisoners incarcerated for possession of one specific drug, it is no surprise that the result is a mere 0.7 percent. In any discussion regarding mass incarceration, and the topic of marijuana legalization is broached, demand that the advocates tell you what percent of state or federal inmates are imprisoned for marijuana possession alone; information on arrests for marijuana charges are entirely insufficient to this end.


A previously mentioned Washington Post article also engages in race-baiting, a common rhetorical tactic of those advocating drug decriminalization, if there is any disproportionate impact on a law it must be a result of bigotry, though these same ideologues do not ascribe the disparity between male and female conviction to sexism.
"Over their lifetimes, black and white Americans use illicit drugs at similar rates, according to federal data. But black adults were more than 2½ times as likely to be arrested for drug possession." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/12/police-arrest-more-people-for-marijuana-use-than-for-all-violent-crimes-combined/?utm_term=.977329e451e5)
True, blacks comprise 31.7% of all drug arrests (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43), they also comprise 30.7% of all emergency room visits for overdosing on illegal drugs (https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/DAWN2k11ED/DAWN2k11ED/DAWN2k11ED.pdf). Their disproportionate rate of drug arrests almost perfectly mirror their disproportionate rate of overdosing on illegal drugs.
White Americans take fewer risks in acquiring illegal drugs than black Americans:
"Using trivariate probit regression with demographic, drug use, and drug market covariates, analyses reveal that African Americans are nearly twice as likely to buy outdoors (0.31 versus 0.14), three times more likely to buy from a stranger (0.30 versus 0.09), and significantly more likely to buy away from their homes (0.61 versus 0.48). These results provide an additional explanation for the differential in arrest rates between African Americans and Whites."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16600529
Furthermore, the basis for these claims of usage at "similar rates" is often times based on self-reporting. There is serious reason to doubt this as a legitimate basis for the claim that black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates:
"Logit regression analyses indicated that intravenous drug users who were black or whose primary drugs of choice were injected cocaine and crack were more likely than other groups to misrepresent their current drug use status. These findings demonstrate the need to corroborate self-report data with other, quantitative measures."
http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/aids/21/
http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/white-privilege-cops-and-courts/