Getting The Facts Straight on Drug Use, Policing, Sentencing and Incarceration

This post is a list of the basic studies that form the empirical background of this blog's discussion of drug law, arrest patterns, incarceration trends, and so on. If folks have suggestions for additional links, please drop me an email.

American Crime Rate, Overall

Uniform Crime Report, published every year by the Department of Justice.

American Drug Use Trends Over Time
Monitoring the Future (an annual survey of youth drug use)
National Survey on Drug Use and Health (an annual survey of drug use trends)
"Generation Rx: The Abuse of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drugs" (a Congressional hearing on pharmaceutical drug use and abuse, March 3, 2008).

California Drug Use Trends Among Youth Over Time

California Student Survey on Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Use (2007-2008)

American Drug Arrests

Marijuana Arrests in 2007

Marijuana Arrests in 2006 (See also this post describing the methodology behind the figures cited by NORML).

An analysis of drug arrests as a percentage of all arrests in major American cities, as well as the way those percentages have changed over time, is shown on page 6 of Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities (May 2008), written by The Sentencing Project.

(Above: Total American drug arrests, 1970-2005. Graph from Disparity by Geography, p. 6.)

International Comparisons of Drug Use Rates
Degenhart et al., Toward a Global View of Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys (2008) (Comparison showing United States as leader of 17 nations
in lifetime use of marijuana, cocaine and tobacco.)

International Comparisons of Incarceration Rates
Pew Center: 1 in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (Showing United States as world's highest per capita incarcerator, with 1% of its entire population incarcerated)

National Council on Crime and Deliquency: U.S. Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective (2006) showing American incarceration rates compared to other nations.

(Above: An international comparison of incarceration rates, as prepared by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in 2006. The United States out-incarcerates every other country in the world, including Russia, South Africa, Cuba and Taiwan. Click to enlarge.)

Drug Law and Racial Disparities
Human Rights Watch: Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcment and Race in the United States (May 2008)
The Sentencing Project: Disparity by Geography: The War on Drugs in America's Cities (May 2008)
Justice Policy Institute: The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties (December 2007)

Matthew R. Durose, et al., Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2005 (NCJ-215243) [federal report showing that "In 2005 police searched 9.5 percent of stopped blacks and 8.8 percent of stopped Hispanics, compared to 3.6 percent of white motorists"].  Pdf of the report here. Press release re the report here.

Policy Statements
2008 White House National Drug Control Policy

2009 White House National Drug Control Policy

Sentencing
Federal Sentencing Commission: Preliminary Crack Cocaine Retroactivity Data Report (June 2008)

Comments

[jsknow]

Great Post!
The devastation of prohibition must be known by the voters.
When that happens policy will change.
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[James Acton]

Some of us policy wonks aren't in ivory towers. Some have "significant personal experience" with drugs... and continue to increase the experience.

When we produce the evidence the person under the minister (I'm speaking of Australia) or the minister ignores it.

If it wasn't for us things would be significantly worse. We at least temper some of the drivel we're asked to produce.

The ivory tower is actually a swamp of the great unwashed masses. Even when presented with evidence (ie pot not causing psychosis) they still believe it does.

Do you know what's really hard? Working in an hostile environment attacked by the public, ministers, and now it seems, the few who think they support us.

[jsknow]

You can't give up the fight. No matter where you are in the world.

Educate the masses to the truth. Point out politicians and other professionals that smoke and still excell... the fact that no one in history has ever died from it... why it became illegal in the first place.

We have the moral high ground by a long shot, we must keep educating the voters! Progress is being made!

If you need a great pep talk look in the "Site Map" and click "Inspiration" on this site:
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