* Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has told the Reader: “I think we should decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, that’s for sure”…
A few weeks ago, hundreds of people, most of them white, gathered in Lincoln Park to celebrate Peace Fest, which featured DJ sets, jam bands, and enough open marijuana smoking that passersby on surrounding streets could get a contact high. Not that anyone was complaining.
That week at the Cook County courthouse at 51st and Wentworth, dozens of people, almost all of them black men, went before a judge to face marijuana possession charges. Some of them ended up with fines and jail time.
Yes, marijuana is illegal. Yet studies show—and come on, everybody knows—that it’s widely used by all racial groups. By and large, however, black people are disproportionately getting busted for it.
The ratio of black to white arrests for marijuana possession in Chicago is 15 to 1, according to a Reader analysis of police and court data. And by the time the cases make their way through the court system, the gap widens even further: the ratio among those who plead or are found guilty is 40 to 1.
* Some stats…
Chicago police made tens of thousands of arrests in 2009 and 2010 for marijuana possession, including 47,400 in which that misdemeanor was the most serious charge. So how egregious are the racial discrepancies?
• Of those arrested, 78 percent were black, 17 percent were Hispanic, and 5 percent were white.
• In those years 4,255 people pleaded or were found guilty of low-level marijuana possession after being arrested in Chicago: 89 percent were black, 9 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were white.
Go read the whole thing.
- bdogg - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:24 am:
thank you, rich, for being a voice of sanity on this issue. democracy works slowly sometimes. we will get there.
- OneMan - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:25 am:
Interesting article rather eye opening.
Was on the train with some Peace Fest attendees, one side effect of MJ appears to be it makes suburban white kids quieter on the train and carry skateboards
- Team Sleep - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:50 am:
In all honesty, if the TEA Party folks truly knew what it cost to patrol for pot, investigate dealers/users, book offenders and then jail them, the dynamic may be different and there might be significant pressure on downstate officials to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on fighting dope. The strain this all causes on the ISP, sheriffs and local police is insane. Ms. Preckwinkle is correct in her assessment on the budgetary strains and the unnecessary ruination of lives.
- Shore - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:53 am:
1. She has more important things to do. She has much more important things to do.
2. This is not her decision. Taxpayers spend billions of dollars at the federal level to fight the war on drugs and have continued to do so despite a hyde park president, illinois democrat senate #2 and a south side democrat house appropriator.
3. If Ms.Preckwinkle thinks that too few kids from the suburbs are getting arrested for pot she’s more than welcome to take that up with the Northbrook PD. I’m sure they’ll make it their first priority.
- Anonymous - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:54 am:
“Chicago police made tens of thousands of arrests in 2009 and 2010 for marijuana possession, including 47,400 in which that misdemeanor was the most serious charge.”
If a driver gets pulled over for speeding or a broken tailight, and marijuana is found in the vehicle, does that get scored as marijuana being the most serious charge?
- Loop Lady - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 10:57 am:
she is the bravest politician in Chicago…you go lady…
- Rich Miller - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:00 am:
===If Ms.Preckwinkle thinks that too few kids from the suburbs are getting arrested for pot ===
Where does she say that?
===She has more important things to do. She has much more important things to do.===
The county budget is her biggest job.
- 47th Ward - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:06 am:
As Rich points out Shore, this is absolutely one of the two most important things she should be doing. The county budget, more than $3 billion, is divided mainly in two categories: public safety and public health. This issue is both.
Taking 47,000 cases out of the court system and/or jails would take a lot of pressure off the county budget.
You need to get out of the north shore more often and see the rest of the world.
- JBilla - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:10 am:
Preckwinkle is the most courageous legislator in the entire state.
- Ahoy - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:11 am:
I think there are two things going on here.
1. We cannot afford to keep people in jail for petty offences. I don’t think there are many people out there who want to pay higher taxes for such petty “crimes.” Ironically the people who probably want to keep tougher laws on drugs are anti-tax right wing ideologues.
2. If you want to solve the poverty problem, you can’t have laws that keep people in poverty. A young man growing up in poverty get’s busted early for pot. Get’s a criminal record that keeps him from getting decent paying job. He then gets stuck in a low-income dead end job back in the cycle of poverty.
How many more lives have to be ruined because of failed drug laws?
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:13 am:
I don’t know if “brave” is the right word.
More like “sensible.”
Kentucky recently decriminalized marijuana possession. And the Indiana legislature just formed a committee to review their marijuana laws with the goal of easing prison overcrowding.
That’s a much better argument BTW than the racial disparity of searches/arrests/prosecutions/convictions.
We spend WAAAY to much incarcerating people for non-violent drug offenses. About $450 million at the Dept. of Corrections, and I’d bet another $1 billion more in court costs, local jails, and law enforcement manpower.
$1.5 billion would provide alot of substance abuse treatment, economic development, and tax relief.
- Just Observing - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:18 am:
@Shore — She does not have more important things to do — the war on drugs (especially marijuana) is a huge failure and we need elected officials on all levels to show courage and speak out against the waste of resources spent on combating a relatively benign drug like marijuana. And you are wrong to say this is a “federal” issue alone — states and local governments make drug policy too. When Cook County residents are busted for marijuana, they generally are not being charged federally. I did not vote for Preckwinkle but she is winning me over.
- Edison Parker - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:26 am:
The courts have mostly decriminalized it if only 10% of those marijuana charges result in plea or finding of guilt. I doubt the conviction/plea rate for most other crimes is as low.
I say this from personal experience as a criminal defense attorney in Chicago. The majority of misdemeanor pot cases I’ve ever had involve something else (bad background or abuse to the cops…ie calling the m-f’s will get you charged with 2 grams of pot, being nice to them will result in it being thrown down a sewer). Don’t misunderstand, I’m in favor of legalization, just saying that there is usually more to it if someone is charged with low level pot. Please note I said “majority” and “usually,” that doesn’t mean “every time” and “always”
- D.P. Gumby - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 11:33 am:
“War” on drugs is a failure; makes Bush’s folly in Iraq appear rational. Prosecution for small personal use of pot is ridiculous. Preckwinkle position is only rational position. Only by taking local action will national policy change. The law enforcement/industrial complex has too much invested in drug enforcement to allow the “War on Drugs” to be eliminated otherwise…now we see the same thing developing w/ “homeland security”…a spigot for money.
- Six Degrees of Separation - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 12:03 pm:
I agree w/Edison Parker. We already have de facto decriminalization in most jurisdictions for small amounts of MJ. The charges that stick are usually associated with multiple offenses such as traffic offenses or burglaries. If a similar standard of intoxication and penalties could be applied by law to MJ as with alcohol, and MJ were decriminalized or even legalized, I suspect things would be worse for the driving pot smoker than they are now, while obviously worry-free for the home user.
- wordslinger - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 12:30 pm:
Geez, what year is this? Decriminalize already.
- Just Observing - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 1:59 pm:
Even if marijuana arrest and prosecution is iffy, it’s still not right to arrest, when it does happen, anyone simply for personal consumption of marijuna — it still subjects that person to government confinement, costs that person time and money, costs that person emotional stress, and costs the government (taxpayers) time and money. Plus it distracts us from larger issues. All of us here are needing to turn our attention to this matter when we should be talking about health care or education or something else more pressing.
- reform - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 3:28 pm:
Marijuana is a less harmful drug than alcohol.
Close to the same proportion of white young people use marijuana as among black teens.
Police enforcement nabs and prosecutes blacks for pot possession at far higher rates. I wonder what explanation cops have for the gross racial disparity in the enforcement states?
- reform - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 3:59 pm:
If Preckwinkle keeps this up, as well as reforming county gov’t, she’ll be a contender for governor.
- Just Observing - Friday, Jul 8, 11 @ 4:57 pm:
While I would not at all be surprised if cops simply arrested minorities more often than whites, there could be other reasons for discrepancy. Perhaps, for some reason or another, white kids are more secretive in their consumption. Perhaps there are more undercover cops in minority neighborhoods making it easier for minorities to get nabbed for things. Maybe minorities are doing other things more frequently to calll attention to themselves such as riding in a car without a seatbelt which then gets them pulled over. I don’t know the reason, I’m just taking guesses. But, again, if the answer is that cops simply charge more black and latino youths with pot than white youths, I certainly would not be surprised.