Drug Policy Question of the Week – 7-21-12

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 7-21-12. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3945

Question of the Week: What is Stop and Frisk?

A May 2011 briefing paper from the Drug Policy Alliance defines a “stop” as

“the practice of police officers stopping individuals on the street to question them.”

A pat-down frisk is

“a limited search subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. It involves a police officer patting down an individual’s outer clothing, and only his outer clothing, if and only if, pursuant to a lawful forcible stop, the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual stopped is armed and dangerous.”

While the Alliance’s briefing paper advises people,

“to ask the police officer politely whether you are free to leave or not,”

it concedes that the

“catch … is that the cops are not required to tell individuals this; most young people stopped on the street don’t know it; and the cops often trick them into “consenting.”

New York City has made these “Stop and Frisk” searches famous.

An analysis by the New York Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, released this past May, found that,

“the [New York Police Department] conducted nearly 700,000 stops in 2011. The total of 685,724 stops marked an increase of 84,439 (14 percent) stops from 2010. During the 10 years of the Bloomberg administration, there have been 4,356,927 stops.”

The Drug Policy Alliance summarized the impact of “Stop and Frisk:”

“… marijuana possession is now the number one arrest in New York City. More than 50,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in 2010 alone, comprising one out of every seven arrests (15 percent). We contend that many of these arrests are the result of illegal searches or false charges.”

Drug Policy Question of the Week – 2-15-12

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 2-15-12. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3752

Question of the Week: Why have the counts of drug prisoners changed?

Government reports are notoriously foggy when it comes to those incarcerated for “drugs.” Divining these elusive numbers requires a spreadsheet and a detailed search of the Bureau of Justice Statistics for numbers buried in some years, but missing from others. Some numbers must simply be computed.

This is the case with probation and parole, for which two different values are reported. For example, Appendix Table 15 of the “Probation and Parole in the United States 2009” report displays percentages for “Characteristics of adults on parole,” including those for “Drug” as the “Most Serious Offense.”   This table indicates that 36% of parolees had “Drugs” as their most serious offense in 2009. Multiplying the 819,000 total 2009 parolees times this 36% produces a count of 295,000 of parolees with “Drug” offenses. However, the numeric counts of “drug” parolees reported in the report’s Appendix Table 20 produce a lesser percentage of parolees with drug offenses – 32%. The same problem can be found in the probation numbers.

Further, reports going back to 1990 contain these kinds of percentages, enabling better trending.

Thus, the new Drug War Facts table that displays the number persons under the control of the U.S. corrections system has been updated with numbers derived from the percentage of total calculations.

Here’s the bottom line. Over 1.7 million probationers, parolees and state and federal prisoners were under the control of the U.S. corrections in 2009 with “drugs” as their most serious offense. This represents over one quarter of the estimated 7.3 million individuals on probation, parole or in prison that year.

These facts and others like them in the Prisons & Drug Offenders Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

Drug Policy Question of the Week – 1-11-12

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 1-11-12. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3706

Question of the Week: How many people are under the control of the U.S. criminal justice system?

An April 2011 report by the Justice Policy Institute begins by stating,

“The United States is home to the world’s largest prison population. … the U.S. has only 5 percent of the world’s population but holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners …”

There are several components to the U.S. criminal justice system. Quoting the Institute,

“The entry point into the criminal justice system is typically through law enforcement. … In the U.S., when a person is charged with an offense they may be detained in jail until their trial or they may be released to await their trial in the community through a variety of mechanisms … people are said to be “remanded,” which is a summons to appear before a judge at a later date. If they are not released pretrial they can be “remanded to custody” until their court proceeding; if they are convicted, they can be remanded to custody prior to sentencing or during an appeal process … Pretrial detention is associated with a higher likelihood of both being found guilty and receiving a sentence of incarceration over probation, thus forcing a person further into the criminal justice system. In the United States, this is particularly important because of the sheer numbers”

What are those numbers?

In 2010 there were approximately:

4,000,000 people on probation

840,000 on parole

207,000 in federal prison

1,300,000 in state prison

and 749,000 in local jails

For a total of 7,100,000 people under the control of the U.S. Criminal Justice system.

These facts and others like them can be found in the “U.S. Corrections Population” Table in  Prisons & Jails Chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

Drug Policy Question of the Week – 10-6-11

As answered by Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts for the Drug Truth Network on 10-6-11. http://www.drugtruth.net/cms/node/3576

Question of the Week: What federal agencies enforce drug laws?

A new table based on a 2009 report from the RAND Corporation can be found in the Drug War Facts Interdiction chapter. This table lists a number of federal agencies that investigate and enforce drug laws. Among these are the United States Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy or ONDCP.

Under the Department of Defense, the Defense Information Systems Agency and its Anti-Drug Network engage in information sharing and data mining. The U.S. Northern Command oversees the continental United States and Alaska. The Joint Task Force North under the Northern Command stops transnational threats like drug smuggling. The U.S. Southern Command operates counterdrug operations in Central and South America. Its Joint Interagency Task Force South prevents illegal trafficking within the Caribbean.

The Drug Enforcement Administration or DEA has several divisions. Its National Security Intelligence Section interfaces with the intelligence community. The DEA’s Operation Pipeline targets private motor vehicles involved in drug trafficking, with its counterpart, Operation Convoy, handling commercial vehicles. The El Paso Intelligence Center is a major hub for disseminating drug related intelligence data. DEA Mobile Intelligence Units assist state and local drug-enforcement challenges.

The ONDCP operates 31 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas or HIDTAs that collect counterdrug intelligence. Each HIDTAs has a Regional Intelligence Center associated with it.

The Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force focuses major drug-smuggling and money-laundering operations, while the multi-agency National Joint Terrorism Task Force brings together more than three-dozen other government agencies that collect and process terrorist intelligence.

A graphical map of these and other federal agencies created by the RAND Corporation can be found at the bottom of the aforementioned table.