Thread by @JohnFPfaff

Our data here is, unsurprisingly, weak, but when I looked at the numbers a while back, weed was abt 1% of prison pops. Bet it’s less now.

That’s 10,000-15,000. Not millions.

And bet it gets even trickier when we dig into the full story.

https://twitter.com/rbreich/status/1384565632704778240

We shouldn’t arrest ppl for weed. We should legalize and regulate it. We should expunge all past weed records.

But weed isn’t directly driving prison pops. And bet it’s indirect effects are weaker than most think too.

“How many ppl in prison not for weed had weed as a prior? How many weed arrests destabilized a life and thus led to later, more serious crime?”

TOTALLY fair questions.

But, overall, bet less than we might think. Imagine a world without weed arrests....

No more weed arre—well, we’d still have some, bc weed’a going to be regulated like alcohol, w all sorts of public-use limits.

But put that aside (tho you can’t). The misdemeanor code is deep. Deep and ambiguous and open to interpretation.

Lots of choices.

If the police can’t stop you for weed, they can prob get you for disorderly conduct (“making excessive noise w intent to annoy,” basically). Air freshener in your car. All sorts of things.

So w legal weed, how much shorter would records be? How much less disruption happens?

I’m not saying there would be NO effect—the police chose to use weed first for a reason—but the real issue is police culture, not weed.

But anyway, most ppl in prison are there for violence. Chunk of those in for drugs have pled around violence.

It’s not weed.