Social Work
147 Alternative Justice Policies for Nonviolent Drug Offenses: A Policy Analysis
Brock Smith and Monique Alires
Faculty Mentor: Jason Castillo (Social Work, University of Utah)
Issue Statement
The US incarcerates the most people globally, resulting in approximately 2,000,000 incarcerated people annually (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022; Vera Institute on Justice, n.d.). Of the 2,000,000 incarcerated people, 373,500 (19%) are incarcerated for drug offenses (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022). A drug offense is a nonviolent offense that includes substance possession, driving under the influence, minor trafficking, sales, and manufacturing (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022; Mauer & King, 2007). In 2020, there were 1,155,610 drug arrests, the vast majority of which (87.7%) were for drug possession or use rather than sale or manufacturing (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022). Thus, many drug offenders become incarcerated for possessing and using substances. The cost of incarcerating drug offenders is 56.6 billion dollars annually, and the effectiveness of incarceration is minimal (The Sentencing Project, 2021). The cost to incarcerate drug offenders is three times greater than the benefit to public safety, with every 1$ spent on incarceration yielding a $0.35 safety benefit (Henrichson, 2013). Additionally, incarcerating drug offenders is an ineffective intervention because drug offenders have a 57.7% recidivism rate for drug offenses alone over ten years post-release, resulting in nearly three of five drug offenders becoming reincarcerated for drug offenses (Antenangeli et al., 2021).
Moreover, significant drug offender populations exist at all US correctional levels, including juvenile detention centers, jails, state prisons, federal prisons, military prisons, and immigration detention centers (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022). The correctional facilities with the highest concentration of convicted drug offenders are state prisons (146,000) and federal prisons (67,000) (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022). Drug offenders in state prisons compose 14% of the inmate population (Carson, 2021). The demographics of state prison drug offenders are female (26%), male (13.1%), White (16.6%), Black (12.2%), Hispanic (11.7%), Asian (11%), and American Indian/Alaskan Native (10.9%) (Carson, 2021). The state inmate groups with the most significant drug offender population are aged 30-39 (Mississippi Department of Corrections, 2021; Edwards & Le Blanc, 2022). In contrast, drug offenders in federal prisons compose 46.7% of the inmate population (Carson, 2021). The demographics of federal prison drug offenders are female (61.6%), male (45.6%), Hispanic (62%), Asian (45.7%), Black (42.1%), White (39.2%), and American Indian/Alaska Native (16.3%) (Carson, 2021). The federal inmate groups with the most significant drug offender populations are aged 30-39 (Taxy et al., 2015).
Root Cause of the Issue
The 1980s War on Drugs was the US government’s initiative to “crackdown” on drug crimes and criminalize drug use that had reach