California Arrest and Prisoner Data

California Holds 1,401 Marijuana Prisoners As Supreme Court Orders Prison Cuts

May 24, 2011 - As the US Supreme Court ordered California to release 30,000 prisoners, the state held 1,401 prisoners for inherently non-violent marijuana felonies, according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Corrections (Dec. 31, 2010).

The number of marijuana prisoners has held more or less steady in California since the height of the drug war in the late 1980s, despite the passage of Prop. 215. There are now over 14 times as many marijuana prisoners in California as in 1980. This does not count federal prisoners, such as Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer, Bryan Epis, Eddy Lepp, DC Costa, Virgil Grant, Kenneth Affotler, Luke Scarmazzo and Ricardo Montes, all of whom are serving mandatory minimums of at least five years for medical marijuana.

Altogether, the state held 24,959 prisoners for inherently non-violent drug offenses at latest count; 8,587 of them for simple possession of controlled substances other than marijuana.

California's prison overcrowding can thus be largely attributed to the drug laws, a modern innovation that did not exist prior to the 20th century.

There are signs that the high tide of drug prohibition may be waning. Drug offenders currently account for 15% of all inmates in state prison, a substantial reduction from the all-time high of 28% in 1999, the year before California approved Prop. 36, which mandated treatment instead of prison for minor possession offenders. Since then, the number of drug prisoners has continued to decline, dropping by fully 20% in the two years since 2008.

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