<story><title>U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem</title><url>http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/30/incarceration-and-crime-rates-fall-in-ta</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ClayFerguson</author><text>If we ever decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal level, that seems to me like it would mean millions of prisoners held for  offenses involving only that drug would need to be set free. In my mind it is a horrible injustice to jail people for a relatively harmless substance like THC.&lt;p&gt;I think in 100 years, more evolved humans will look back on the THC incarcerations the same way we now look upon the Salem Witch trials, or prohibition, etc. You know, one of those times where mankind just massively screwed up &amp;#x27;en mass&amp;#x27; on sort of a societal level, and was unable to correct itself because the majority of people are brainwashed into believing whatever their parents told them about things. Sort of as a feed-back loop also, parents were unwilling to teach their children things that conflicted with societal norms. So society as a whole can fall into this kind of a &amp;#x27;rut&amp;#x27; where getting out of it takes a long process of evolution of thought.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>There are not millions of people being held for offenses only involving marijuana: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bjs.gov&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;pub&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;dofp12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bjs.gov&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;pub&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;dofp12.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (page 2).&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not possession.)&lt;p&gt;Rolling Stone estimated about 40,000 people in prison for convictions primarily involving marijuana, with about half of those involving marijuana alone: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&amp;#x2F;culture&amp;#x2F;lists&amp;#x2F;top-10-marijuana-myths-and-facts-20120822&amp;#x2F;myth-prisons-are-full-of-people-in-for-marijuana-possession-19691231&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&amp;#x2F;culture&amp;#x2F;lists&amp;#x2F;top-10-marijuana-m...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;That is of course not to say that justice, for a few tens of thousands of people isn&amp;#x27;t an important thing! Though I hesitate a little bit to put trafficking in the same &amp;quot;justice&amp;quot; category as using. It&amp;#x27;s generally accepted that the government has much more leeway to control what is sold in the market than to control what people do with their bodies.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem</title><url>http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/30/incarceration-and-crime-rates-fall-in-ta</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ClayFerguson</author><text>If we ever decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal level, that seems to me like it would mean millions of prisoners held for  offenses involving only that drug would need to be set free. In my mind it is a horrible injustice to jail people for a relatively harmless substance like THC.&lt;p&gt;I think in 100 years, more evolved humans will look back on the THC incarcerations the same way we now look upon the Salem Witch trials, or prohibition, etc. You know, one of those times where mankind just massively screwed up &amp;#x27;en mass&amp;#x27; on sort of a societal level, and was unable to correct itself because the majority of people are brainwashed into believing whatever their parents told them about things. Sort of as a feed-back loop also, parents were unwilling to teach their children things that conflicted with societal norms. So society as a whole can fall into this kind of a &amp;#x27;rut&amp;#x27; where getting out of it takes a long process of evolution of thought.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ehnto</author><text>It would be interesting to see the re-incarceration rate of those set free from charges like that.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if jail time has the opposite effect of rehabilitation for many, especially considering how much harder life can be with jail time on your record, or even just the black hole in your resume that you have to explain.&lt;p&gt;Not to mention that you spent the last however many years being told and treated like criminal scum, I imagine that would have a fairly significant impact on your mental health and self image, as well as your relationships with friends and family.</text></comment>