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.
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.

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More from @JohnFPfaff

20 Apr
In case anyone wondered what Chauvin judge was talking about at the end when he talked about "Blakely":

The statutory max for 2nd degree murder in MN is 40 yrs, but MN has fairly strict sentencing guidelines, which set the default at 12.5 yrs.

Takes some work to something more.
It used to be judges operating under guidelines like MN's could do some post-trial fact-finding. If they found aggravating facts, they could impose above-the-default sentences. If they didn't find them, they couldn't.

In Blakely v Washington, SCOTUS threw a wrench into this.
The details of case itself, and the somewhat chaotic and at times infuriating cases that got to it, aren't so important (tho I wrote my dissertation on it, so... if you want them...).

What matters is that it declared judicial fact-finding like MN's unconstitutional.
Read 8 tweets
20 Apr
I've been thinking about this graph a lot lately, and I think it misstates the nature of policing in the US.

The issue isn't the SCALE of policing in the US, but its NATURE.

In terms of police PER CAPITA, the US appears to be... BELOW average, even compared to most of Europe.
Comparing spending is tough, bc so much police spending is wages:spending reflects things like union power, purchasing power parity, etc., etc., etc.

Per capita policing seem like a more apples-to-apples comparison.

Our staffing is middling. Which means the issue is APPROACH.
There are, of course, some major gaps in the UN ODC data (available here: dataunodc.un.org/data/crime/Pol…). Most obv are the missing big countries: China (1), India (2), Indonesia (4), Pakistan (5), Brazil (6), Nigeria (7), and Bangladesh (8).

But the US/Euro comp is informative.
Read 6 tweets
19 Apr
So: the FL protest bill DeSantis just signed is, I think, the first (of many pending) to target defunding.

If a city cuts police funding, DA or other officials can appeal to the gov, who will refer the budget to an Admin Commission, which can restore funding without appeal.
By my count, there are at least ten other states with these bills working their way thru the lege, most in states w GOP trifectas.

Some threaten funding cuts, TX demands cities keep up w inflation, AZ allows sheriffs to take over.

Preemption is coming for reforms.
Some states are expanding supersession laws, which allow the state AG to take cases away from local DAs.

Others are altering local sovereign immunity standards, I think to make it easier to sue cities that don’t crack down hard enough on protests.
Read 5 tweets
6 Apr
Looking through my tweets, I've attacked Cotton tweets making this claim in 2016 and 2018. Now 2021. It's like a cycle for him.

Here's the main rebuttal: so small a fraction of ppl committing crimes end up in prison that the problem isn't there. It's earlier.
People don't trust the police, or don't think reporting to the police is worth their time, or have other reasons to fear going to the police (like immigration status).

55% of non-lethal violent crimes go unreported, and 65% of property crimes.
Of those crimes that the police hear about or witness themselves, the percent that result in an arrest are below 20% for property crimes, and often below 50% for violent offenses... and that's after those low reporting rates.
Read 12 tweets
5 Apr
I am not easily shocked. I get nervous, sometimes, at how insured I feel abt the persistent violence I study.

This article, about how two police officers terrorized a FIVE YEAR OLD BOY, shocked me.

I've rarely put trigger warnings on my threads, but...

washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…
The boy left school. So the school CALLED THE COPS.

Where did the cops find him? ONE BLOCK FROM SCHOOL.

He wasn't missing. He was ONE. BLOCK. AWAY.

This is the unnecessary start. Calling the cops. On this.
The cop immediately starts berating the boy. The five year old boy.

A FIVE YEAR OLD WHO KNEW TO BE AFRAID HE COULD GO TO JAIL.

Just... sit with that for a moment. Not just that it could happen. But that a five year KNEW TO FEAR IT.

FIVE. HE'S FIVE.

I mean, God damnit. FIVE.
Read 10 tweets
5 Apr
You know one thing the Millennials didn't learn from the Boomers?

The surge in crime in the 1960s-80s happened when the massive cohort of Boomers aged into their most violence-prone ages.

Know when the Millennials--almost = to the Boomers in number--hit those ages?

The 2000s.
Yes, there are lots of explanations that tie into cohort-differences. Lead! Abortion! Cell Phones! Video games!

(All surely mattered, but all to a lesser and more complicated and less-well understood than their evangelists would like.)

But it's a major, striking difference.
The Millennials ate more avocado toast but killed and attacked and robbed a lot fewer people.

Which is why I'm Team Millennial whenever the Boomers lamely try to wage generational warfare.*
Read 4 tweets

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