“The very idea that small quantity drug users are imprisoned is a red herring. In my research I could not find a single small quantity drug user in prison for that offense.”
A worthy observation. To respond, we turned to David Borden, publisher of Drug War Chronicles and founder of www.DRCNet.com.
Precisely how best to reply might depend on what the writer was responding to, but generally I would say that the argument is too selectively-tailored, perhaps is even a strawman argument. It’s true that there are not many people in prison for simple drug possession, and that most who are either have rap sheets or have been charged for possession as part of a plea bargain or a prosecutorial strategy; and it’s also true that advocates in our movement have occasionally mispoken on this, or spoken imprecisely in a way that can be characterized as mispeaking. But focusing just on simple drug possessors in prison avoids a host of injustices and extreme situations in the US justice system:
drug users in jail
people who have multiple drug possession convictions because they are addicts
people who might not be addicts, but whose multiple possession convictions didn’t involve more serious crimes
low-level sellers, including people who were only tangentially involved (such as the “girlfriend problem,” e.g. the Kemba Smith case), or who sold because they were addicted
the enormous multiplying during the ’80 and subsquently of the arrest and incarceration rates, driven by drug policy although not exclusively drug policy
the collateral consequences of arrests or low-level convictions, including difficulty obtaining employment, loss of college aid or welfare or public housing eligibility, etc.
other types of criminal justice control such as probation and parole, minor violations of which often lead to jail or prison much more now than in the past.
There are some illustrative stats on the DWF Drug Offenders in the Correctional System page at http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs. ; The ones that at first glance seem the most on point to me (although it’s hard to find perfectly on point stats for some of these questions, including this one) are the following (paraphrased by me in some cases, not the sources):
On December 31, 2011, there were 55,013 people in state prisons for drug possession. (Item #1, Drug Offenders in US Prisons 2012.)
In 2004, 27.9% of drug offenders in state prisons were serving time for drug possession. (Item #20, Drug Offenses of State Inmates in the US, 2004.) (Although I noted above that prison terms for drug possession often involve other things, it would be incautious at best to presume that all 55,000 of these in 2011 and all the 28% of drug cases noted for 2004 can be written off in that way.)
“17% of State and 18% of Federal prisoners committed their crime to obtain money for drugs.” (Item #8, Estimated Drug Use by Prisoners in 2004.) Some substantial percentage of these undoubtedly were low-level drug selling crimes committed by addicts. (And the other types of crime committed by addicts make an additional point about the consequences of prohibition, but that goes beyond the topic of the comment.)
In 2004, the Justice Department found that 5.3% of federal drug prisoners were incarcerated to possession. (Item #17, Federal Drug Prisoners by Offense, 2004.)
Drug offenders accounted for 49% of the growth in the number of prisoners between 1995 and 2003. (Item #18, Incarceration Growth 1995-2003.)
In 2002 over 25% of drug offenders in local jails and over 11% of all jail inmates were there for simple possession. (Item #23, Local Jail Inmates.) In this category there is a much more likely probability that the case was actually just possession, although I don’t have stats for that.
And from the Crime, Arrests, and US Law Enforcement page (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime):
“Of the 1,552,432 arrests for drug law violations in 2012, 82.2% (1,276,099) were for possession of a controlled substance. (Item #1, Total Annual Drug Arrests in the US, by Type.)
Between 1973 and 2012, arrests for drug law violations increased from 328,670 per year to 1,552,432 per year. Arrests for violent crimes increased far more slowly, from 380,560 to 521,196. The same was the case for property crime arrests, which increased only from 1,448,700 to 1,646,212. (Item #2, Total Number of Arrests in the US, 1973 and 2012.)
