Social Justice Brief
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jails. Although de-criminalization of drug use
is not likely to happen soon, it is important to
examine how such offenses can be handled
more reasonably.
History and Consequences of
Over-Criminalization of Drug Use
Criminalization of personal behaviors is not
new. In the 1920s, Congress passed the 18th
Amendment, which prohibited alcohol use. In
an acknowledgement of the failure of alcohol
prohibition, a new Congress (on February 20,
1933) sent the 21st Amendment, which
repealed prohibition, to the states. The reason
for this legislative turnaround was that
“Congress recognized that prohibition had
failed to stop drinking and had increased
prison populations and violent crime” (Boaz,
1999, para. 4). Similarly, during the 1980s
the Reagan administration declared a “War
on Drugs,” which essentially had a similar
purpose as that of the 18th Amendment—to
react to a perceived threat to societal norms,
by criminalizing personal behaviors (Boaz,
1999). As a result, the administration’s
response to the proliferation of crack cocaine
use during the late 1980s reinforced the
criminalization of personal drug use and
increased the number of individuals in the
criminal justice system. As has been widely
reported, the consequences of the War on
Drugs have been the arrests and incarceration
of many thousands of mostly minority young
men and women for minor drug offenses such
as possession of marijuana. Many of those
arrested and convicted of such minor offenses
have histories of drug abuse, and the crimes
for which they are arrested are more related
to their substance use disorders than to
building drug trafficking empires.
For example, consider the Rockefeller Drug
Laws and subsequently, “stop-and-frisk” police
procedures that are in place in New York
State and New York City (NYC), respectively.
In 1973, then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller
enacted laws that called for stricter penalties
for drug-related crimes, such as mandatory
minimum sentences of 15 years to life for
possession of four ounces of narcotics. The
statutes became known as the Rockefeller
Drug Laws. The laws almost immediately led
to an increase in drug convictions, but no
measurable decrease in overall crime
(“A Brief History, 2009”).
Stop-and-frisk policing policies were used in
NYC to stem gun violence. The policy allows
police officers to stop and search anyone that
the officer considers to be suspicious. Recent
data suggest that the policy was less than
successful in getting guns off the streets but
was highly successful in arresting people for
low-level crimes such as simple possession of
marijuana. The policy also exposed the NYC
Police Department to accusations of engaging
in racial profiling. For example,
» In 2011, NYC officers made 685,724
stops as part of the “stop-and-frisk” policy.
Of that group, 605,328 people were
determined not to have engaged in any
unlawful behavior.
» In 2009, 36 percent of the time an officer
failed to list an acceptable “suspected crime.”
Reasonable suspicion of a crime is
required to make a stop.
» Of those frisked in 2011, a weapon
was found just 1.9 percent of the time.
» 8.5 percent of those stopped were black or
Hispanic, even though those groups make
up about half of NYC’s population.
» The number of stops involving young black
men in 2011 (168,124) exceed the city’s
population of young black men (158,406).
Even in white neighborhoods, police
stopped more blacks than whites”
(Legum, 2012, para. 3).
Recently, a number of high profile public
officials have begun to wonder aloud whether
the War on Drugs, as a national policy,
should be revisited. For instance,
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has
recently pushed ending criminal arrests for
possession of small “personal use” quantities