Drugs and the Justice System - Conviction And Sentencing Trends

According to SAMHSA data, in 2003 nearly thirty-five million people aged twelve and older had used drugs in the past year. (See Table 3.3 in Chapter 3.) That year, as shown in Table 5.2, almost 1.7 million people were arrested for drug abuse violations, equivalent to about 5% of all estimated past-year users. According to data from the BJS, of the just-over one million people convicted by state courts for felonies in 2002, 32% were convicted for drug felonies (State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 2002, Washington, DC: BJS, April

TABLE 5.5
Felony convictions and sentences in state courts relative to number of arrests, 2002
[For 100 arrests]
SOURCE: "Felony Convictions and Sentences in State Courts Relative to the Number of Arrests, 2002," in Drugs and Crime Facts, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, December 2004, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/contents.htm (accessed February 14, 2005)

Offense	Felony conviction	Incarcerations	Prison sentences
Murder*	70	67	64
Robbery	47	41	34
Aggravated assault	23	17	10
Burglary	50	36	23
Motor vehicle theft	18	14	7
Drug trafficking	80	54	34
*Includes nonnegligent manslaughter.

TABLE 5.6
Sentence length and time served, by offenses, 2002
[In months]
SOURCE: "Mean State Prison Sentence and Estimated Time to Be Served in Prison, by Offenses, 2002," in Drugs and Crime Facts, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/contents.htm (accessed February 14, 2005)

Most serious conviction offense	Mean state prison sentence	Estimated time to be served*
Murder	225	142
Sexual assault	100	64
Robbery	91	53
Aggravated assault	54	36
Burglary	50	24
Larceny	34	18
Drug offenses
Possession	35	14
Trafficking	55	24
*Derived by multiplying the percentage of sentence to be served by the mean sentence imposed.

2005 http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/contents.htm). Of these, nearly two-thirds were convicted for trafficking—85% were males and nearly half were in their twenties. The number of those convicted of possession was less than 1% of the total number of users of drugs. For every one hundred arrests for drug trafficking, eighty of those arrestees were convicted of a felony in state courts, and thirty-four were sentenced to state prison. (See Table 5.5.) Table 5.6 shows the average length of those sentences.

Convictions and Race

Minorities represent a significant and growing portion of American prisoners, with the growth rate of incarcerations due to drug offenses from 1995-2001 committed by African-Americans at 23%, opposed to that of whites at 18%. (See Table 5.7.) According to BJS data, of the 266,465 adults arrested for drug trafficking in 2002, 212,810 were convicted. According to the BJS, of those convicted, 85% were male, 51% were white, and 47% were African-American. In absolute numbers, more whites are arrested and convicted for drug violations than African-Americans, but African-Americans are much more likely to be arrested and convicted in proportion to their representation in the population.

Once convicted for drug offenses, more African-Americans, on average, are incarcerated than whites, and more whites on average receive milder jail sentences (less than a year) than blacks or get probation or split sentences, as shown in Table 5.8. Of all whites convicted of drug offenses in 2000, 63% were incarcerated, versus 73% of all African-Americans convicted of drug offenses. Among convicted whites, 30% went to prison (sentences of a year or longer), and among African-Americans this figure was 48%. About one-third (32%) of whites got the milder jail sentence, versus 25% of African-Americans. More whites received nonincarceration sentences (37%) than African-Americans (28%). Similarly, more whites received probation (32%) than African-Americans (24%). The "other" category shown in the table includes split sentences and other disposition of the cases.

Truth-in-Sentencing

Sentence lengths for all offenses moved upward in U.S. district courts for almost half a century, from 1945 to 1991. Average sentence lengths for drug offenses also showed an upward trend during this time, except for a few slight dips over the years. (See Table 5.9.) A slight downward trend in sentence lengths for drug offenses took place during the 1990s through 2001, followed by an upturn in 2002 and 2003.

Sentence lengths, however, do not fully convey the picture. The time actually served for an offense is a better indicator of the actual "price" society extracts for an offense. Thus, for instance, a person sentenced to five years who serves 60% of his sentence and is then paroled serves as long as a person sentenced to four years who serves 75% of her sentence. In both cases, time served will be three years. Public perceptions in the late 1970s that felons were sentenced only to walk free after doing a brief stint in prison culminated in the "truth-in-sentencing" movement, an attempt at the state and federal levels to reform sentencing practices. The State of Washington passed the first truth-in-sentencing statute in 1984. Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the same year with the purpose of setting mandatory sentence lengths. The consequence of these actions (42 states and the District of Columbia have passed truth-in-sentencing laws since 1984) was an increase in

TABLE 5.7
Total growth of state prison population, by race and offense, 1995-2001
SOURCE: "Total Growth of Sentenced Prisoners under State Jurisdiction, by Offense, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 1995-2001," in Drugs and Crime Facts, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2003, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/contents.htm (accessed February 14, 2005)

	White		Black		Hispanic
	Increase, 1995-2001	Percent of total	Increase, 1995-2001	Percent of total	Increase, 1995-2001	Percent of total
Total	90,700	100%	83,200	100%	35,300	100%
Violent	53,000	59	47,400	57	29,900	82
Property	3,000	3	0	—	− 100	—
Drug	16,200	18	19,100	23	− 1,400	—
Public-order	18,000	20	16,800	20	6,800	18

TABLE 5.8
Felony sentencing, by type, as percent of total, imposed by state courts, 1998 and 2000
SOURCE: Adapted from Ann L. Pastore, and Kathleen Maguire, "Table 4.10. Arrests," in Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1996-2001, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics; original data obtained from successive editions of Crime in the United States, Federal Bureau of Investigation

		Incarceration						Nonincarceration
	Total	Total		Prison		Jail		total		Probation		Other
		1998	2000	1998	2000	1998	2000	1998	2000	1998	2000	1998	2000
Whites
Drug offenses	100	65	63	33	30	32	32	35	37	32	32	3	6
Possession	100	67	62	31	27	36	35	33	38	30	31	3	7
Trafficking	100	64	63	35	33	29	31	36	37	33	32	3	4
Blacks
Drug offenses	100	73	73	51	48	23	25	27	28	24	24	2	3
Possession	100	72	72	47	48	25	24	28	28	25	25	2	4
Trafficking	100	74	73	52	48	21	25	26	27	24	24	2	3
Note: Detail may not sum to total because of rounding. Racial categories include Hispanics. Shaded areas are those where one racial group is less represented than the other.

time served even as, in some areas, the average length of the formal sentences grew shorter.

The effects of truth-in-sentencing at the state level are illustrated using data for 1990 and 1999 for all categories of offenses. (See Table 5.10.) The average sentence length for all offenses went down from sixty-nine months in 1990 to sixty-five months in 1999. Total time served went up from twenty-eight months to thirty-four months, a consequence of the fact that the percent of sentence served increased from 38% in 1990 to 48.7% in 1999.

In the drug offense category, state prison sentence length for possession dropped from sixty-one to fifty-six months from 1990 to 1999, but time served increased from eighteen to twenty-five months. Sentence length for drug trafficking increased from sixty to sixty-four months; actual time served went up from twenty-two to twenty-nine months. As these data show, there remained in this period a fairly wide gap between the average sentence imposed and the actual time served, but time served was up. Under federal sentencing guidelines, persons sentenced are required to serve 85% of the imposed sentence. At the state level in 1999, the percent of time served was well below 85%: 42.4% for possession, and 42% for trafficking. Those selling drugs, in effect, served slightly less of their imposed sentences than those caught carrying drugs, though percentage of time served was up from 1990, when those convicted of possession served only 29% and those convicted of trafficking served only 34.8%.