CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE EXEC SUMMARY
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Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States

CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310

As America entered the new millennium, we culminated the most punishing decade in our nationšs history. More persons were added to prisons and jails during the 1990s than during any other decade on record, and America entered the 21st Century perilously close to incarcerating 2 million of its citizens.

While substantial increases in all categories of inmates have contributed to Americašs mushrooming incarceration rates, the use of imprisonment for drug offenders has increased particularly sharply, drawing increased attention by researchers and policy makers alike.

Summary of Findings
As with other examinations of the impact of the drug war on incarceration rates, the Justice Policy Institute found that the imprisonment of drug offenders has grown at an alarming rate over the past two decades, even when compared to the generally explosive growth of incarceration in the US during that time. While the number of people entering state prison for violent offenses nearly doubled from 1980 to 1997 (82% increase), the number of nonviolent offenders has tripled (207% increase) and the number of persons imprisoned for drug offenses has increased eleven-fold (1040% increase). The number of drug offenders going to prison exceeded the number of violent prison commitments beginning in 1989 and has continued to do so every year since.

Nearly one in four persons (23.7%) imprisoned in the United States is currently imprisoned for a drug offense. The number of persons behind bars for drug offenses (458,131) is roughly the same as the entire prison and jail population in 1980 (474,368). There are 100,000 more persons imprisoned in America for drug offenses than all prisoners in the European Union, even though the EU has 100 million more citizens than the US. The cost of incarcerating over 458,000 prisoners for drug offenses now exceeds $9 billion annually.

This punitive and costly approach has fallen most heavily on young, black males. Overall commitments of young adults to prison from 1986 to 1996 has increased four-fold. Even though surveys continue to show similar drug usage rates for young blacks and whites, drug commitment rates for black males ages 15 ­ 29 increased six-fold during that period while the comparable rates for young whites doubled. In 6 states ­ Hawaii, Texas, South Carolina, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Maine ­ drug commitment rates for young whites actually declined while comparable black rates experienced two- to eight-fold increases.

The state of California locks a higher percentage of its citizens up for drug offenses than any other state. An analysis of Californiašs prison data showed that the number of persons incarcerated for drug offenses in California rose from 1,778 in 1980 to 44,455 in 1999, a 25-fold increase in a 20 year span. California now has twice as many persons incarcerated for drug offenses as its entire 1980 prison population.

Finally, we utilized data from 23 very diverse states around the country for which we had both drug use data and rates of drug offender admissions to prison. Ultimately, we found a significant, positive correlation between the two, suggesting that states with higher rates of drug incarceration experience higher, not lower, rates of drug use.

This report comes at a time when several large states have begun to question the efficacy of incarceration as a solution to drug abuse through legislative, judicial, and voter-driven initiatives. Michiganšs legislature and governor modified one of the nationšs oldest mandatory sentencing systems by tempering the mandatory life without the possibility of parole provisions of its drug laws. In June 2000, New York State Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye announced a judicially-driven reform effort that would divert 10,000 drug offenders in New York into treatment instead of incarceration. This November, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on an initiative which will reduce prison and jail populations by sending persons convicted of nonviolent drug charges to treatment instead of prison. A recent Field Poll found a 64% approval rating from likely California voters for the initiative.

This site and its contents Š 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice