1999 report:
(it is much higher today)
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http://www.mpp.org/arrests/fas61699.html
The FAS Drug Policy Analysis Bulletin
Issue Number Seven
June 1999
Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United States
by Chuck Thomas
There were more than 700,000 marijuana arrests in the United States in 1997.
[1] This was the largest number in U.S. history. Of these arrests, 87% were for possession rather than sale or manufacture. The percentage of possession arrests has been at least 80% for more than a decade, and it has been rising throughout the 1990s.
[2] The total number of annual marijuana arrests, having dipped in the 1980s, has been rising sharply since 1992.
It is often asserted that these arrests rarely lead to any substantial penalty, and that therefore the costs of the current high-arrest policy, both to those arrested and to the correctional system, are modest. Some recent figures from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) cast doubt on that assertion.
Calculations based on recent BJS reports suggest that, at any one time, 59,300 prisoners charged with or convicted of violating marijuana laws (3.3% of the total incarcerated population) are behind bars, at a total cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year. They represent almost 12% of the total federal prison population and about 2.7% of the state prison population. Of the people incarcerated in federal and state prison and in local jails, 37,500 were charged with marijuana offenses only and an additional 21,800 with both marijuana offenses and other controlled-substance offenses. Of the marijuana-only offenders, 15,400 are incarcerated for possession, not trafficking.
The Estimates: State and Federal Prisons
The BJS report provides data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities.
[3] According to the report, 12.9% of the drug prisoners in state prison and 18.9% of those in federal prison were incarcerated for marijuana/hashish offenses. The report uses the numbers 216,254 and 55,069 as the total numbers of state and federal inmates, respectively, for all drug offenses. Using these numbers, the total number of people incarcerated for marijuana offenses would be 27,900 in state prison and 10,400 in federal prison, for a total of 38,300 marijuana prisoners.
However, this estimate of the number of marijuana prisoners is too low, as it is based on an estimated total number of all prisoners which the BJS report notes is an underestimate.
The BJS report's estimates of the total number of drug prisoners represents 20.7% and 62.6% of the total estimated state and federal inmate populations, respectively. But the report notes that its estimated 1,046,705 state inmates and 88,018 federal inmates represent undercounts. Excluded from the BJS estimate of federal inmates were unsentenced inmates and those prisoners under federal jurisdiction but housed in state and private contract facilities. Those prisoners who were under state jurisdiction, yet held in local jails or private facilities, were excluded from the estimated number of state prisoners.
[3]
An even newer BJS report provides accurate prisoner counts as of 30 June 1998 -- a total of 1,102,653 state prisoners and 107,381 federal prisoners.
[4] In the Survey of Inmates, marijuana prisoners composed 2.7% of the state prison population and 11.8% of the federal population. Assuming that the proportions of drug prisoners to all prisoners -- and of marijuana prisoners to all drug prisoner -- was the same in the total prison population in June 1998 as in the population subject to the Survey of Inmates, there would be 29,800 marijuana prisoners presently incarcerated in state prisons and 12,700 marijuana prisoners presently incarcerated in the federal prison system, for a total of 42,500 marijuana prisoners.
This number is surprisingly high; the only recent published estimate, in a report by the Marijuana Policy Project issued in November 1998, put the figure at 29,300.
[5]
Additional data obtained from a BJS official distinguish between offenses involving "marijuana only" and "marijuana and other drugs" (usually cocaine/crack).
[6] According to the 1997 BJS prisoner surveys, 16,435 state prisoners and 8,150 federal prisoners were incarcerated for "marijuana only" offenses. Adjusting for the June 30, 1998 prisoner counts yields estimates of 17,600 state prisoners and 10,000 federal prisoners incarcerated for offenses involving only marijuana, for a total of 27,600 "marijuana only" prisoners.
BJS officials also estimated that 42% of state "marijuana only" prisoners and 23% of federal "marijuana only" prisoners were incarcerated for possession, not "trafficking."
[7] ("Trafficking" includes "possession with intent to distribute.") Applied to the previously calculated estimates, as adjusted for the June 1998 prisoner counts, there would be 7,400 state prisoners and 2,300 federal prisoners incarcerated for marijuana possession only, for a total of 9,700 prisoners.
