Marijuana Possession Arrests Outpace Violent Crime Arrests

The good folks over at Think Progress recently put out a very revealing article.

In 2012 drug offenses accounted for the majority of total arrests. 82% of the 1.55 million drug arrests were for simple possession and 42.4% were for marijuana possession. That means that 654,100 people have had their lives inexorably changed for having a small amount of cannabis. Take a kid with a dime bag and slap a conviction on him and you sort of push him down the fork in the road that leads to lesser opportunities and diminished potential.

Another issue is the considerable waste of human capital and resources that annually get sunk into pursuing non-violent cannabis offences. In the last decade alone, the NYPD poured over one million hours into marijuana arrests. Couple that with the costs of incarceration and judicial processing and the pursuit of cannabis criminals quickly becomes an unbearable burden.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I would actually prefer that my police department spent my tax dollars combating violent crime. Marijuana possession arrests currently outpace violent-crime arrests. In 2011 there were just over 660,000 marijuana arrests compared to about 530,000 violent crime arrests. The simple act of legalizing or even decriminalizing/rescheduling cannabis  (so far a roaring success in Washington and Colorado) could not only keep over half a million people out of the justice system, but free up the resources and bodies to help reduce violent crime. A child could compare violent criminals to potheads and easily see which necessitated law enforcement.

These directives and mandatory arrest quotas come down from the higher-ups. Faced with meeting metrics and the constant need to justify a budget, drug arrests are a fairly straightforward and an easy route to presentable success. From the thinkprogress.org article:

“In New York, for example, the aggressive NYPD stop-and-frisk program has been touted as a way to net illegal guns. But among the small fraction of stopped New Yorkers who are arrested for anything at all, marijuana is the number one offense. This is so even though marijuana possession is decriminalized in New York, except when it is in public view. New York police officers reportedly ask subjects to take marijuana out of their pockets in the course of a frisk, and then arrest them for marijuana in public view.

Police also stand to profit from seizing money and assets they believe are associated with drug crimes. And once arrested, drug defendants face stiff mandatory minimum sentences, unless they take a plea deal, or barter with law enforcement by serving as a snitch or ensnaring other drug defendants. As a consequence, drug offenders fill our jails at enormous taxpayer expense.”

Seems like some of our law makers need another common-sense suppository.