The FBI’s system of reporting state and native marijuana arrests could also be significantly flawed, and a neighborhood Maryland official with intensive drug coverage expertise is asking the Justice Division Workplace of the Inspector Common to launch a proper investigation into the matter.
What appears to be on the heart of the problem is confusion amongst native legislation enforcement companies about whether or not citations issued for hashish possession beneath state decriminalization legal guidelines are required to be reported to FBI as “arrests.” That has led to inconsistency within the yearly launched knowledge and, in consequence, calls into query its utility as a instrument that may inform policymaking in the case of marijuana.
FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program is broadly relied on by lawmakers, researchers and media to grasp and contextualize legislation enforcement tendencies, with greater than 18,000 jurisdictions reporting to the company on what number of, and why varieties of, arrests are made in a given 12 months.
However in the case of hashish “arrests,” there seems to be an issue that would have important implications for policymakers and observers assessing the impacts of decriminalization insurance policies and probably even federal funding for police departments.
Briefly, the hashish arrest knowledge reported by way of UCR could also be inflated, with one state police division telling Marijuana Second that their interpretation of FBI reporting tips implies that they should categorize easy civil violations for hashish possession as arrests. However an evaluation exhibits that that interpretation isn’t being constantly adopted by departments, a few of which have began reporting considerably fewer marijuana arrests post-decriminalization.
The obvious drawback promoted Eric Sterling, an legal professional who at present serves as an appointed member of the Montgomery County, Maryland Policing Advisory Fee, to succeed in out to native and state legislation enforcement for solutions. What he realized prompted him to demand an investigation from the Justice Division’s Inspector Common.
Maryland decriminalized marijuana in 2014, making possession of as much as 10 grams of hashish a civil infraction punishable by a superb with out arrest or the specter of jail time. However the Maryland State Police (MSP) says they nonetheless report the issuance of these fines as arrests. On the identical time, one main metropolis within the state, Baltimore, appears to have adopted a special system of reporting, with far fewer hashish arrests being reported within the years after Maryland enacted decriminalization.
“The Maryland UCR Program follows the Nationwide UCR Program tips when reporting crime knowledge to the Nationwide Program,” an MSP spokesperson informed Marijuana Second. “If a civil quotation is issued for marijuana, then for UCR functions, it’s cited as an arrest.”
The state legislation enforcement company cited the FBI’s Nationwide Incident-Based mostly Reporting System guide that instructs the reporting of “violation of legal guidelines prohibiting the manufacturing, distribution, and/or use of sure managed substances and the gear or gadgets utilized of their preparation and/or use.”
There’s no distinction between civil violations and felony arrests in that definition. So MSP is successfully saying that as a result of marijuana isn’t legalized within the state, however merely decriminalized with penalties nonetheless on the books, a easy superb remains to be required “to be reported in a Group A Incident Report as an arrest for a drug/narcotic violation.”
However Holly Morris, a public affairs specialist at FBI, informed Marijuana Second on Friday that there’s a special web page of that steering that does truly account for 3 distinct varieties of “arrests” that companies are anticipated to report, together with citations. It reads, partially:
Legitimate Knowledge Values—[Law Enforcement Agency] ought to enter just one per arrestee:
O=On-View Arrest (apprehension with no warrant or earlier incident report)
S=Summoned/Cited (not taken into custody)
T=Taken Into Custody (primarily based on a warrant and/or beforehand submitted incident report)
Presumably, the “S” legitimate knowledge worth needs to be the designator {that a} formal “arrest” wasn’t made, nevertheless it’s not clear that that info is successfully disaggregated on the publicly out there UCR report in a manner that will give researchers, media and lawmakers the context they should inform analyses of marijuana enforcement in states which have enacted decriminalization.
Sterling, who filed the brand new DOJ grievance, informed Marijuana Second that he grew suspicious about how FBI’s coverage was being utilized with respect to the UCR program primarily based on a number of conversations he’s had with legislation enforcement.
It’s why he despatched a letter to the U.S. Division of Justice’s Inspector Common, imploring the division to research what he described as “wasteful misconduct” by FBI to require police departments to “wrongfully and inaccurately characterize necessary legislation enforcement knowledge, and to publish false and deceptive knowledge a couple of very massive and necessary class of police exercise, arrests for marijuana violations.”
Sterling informed Marijuana Second in a telephone interview that he’s but to listen to again from the IG’s workplace. He additionally reached out to the workplace of his congressman, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who chairs a subcommittee of the Home Oversight and Reform Committee and in addition serves on the Judiciary Committee, each of which might have jurisdiction over this matter. The congressman’s workplace didn’t reply to Marijuana Second’s request for remark.
The rationale that this UCR info issues is multifaceted. Sterling, who beforehand served as counsel for the Home Judiciary Committee, harassed that “as a result of the arrests are being miscounted—arrests in decriminalization states—it does significantly undermine the worth of marijuana decriminalization as a price saving for the police,” which is certainly one of quite a few arguments that advocates make in favor of reform.
Moreover, Sterling agreed that it’s “fairly attainable” that arrest knowledge from UCR general could affect federal funding for state and native police departments, beneath packages just like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Help Grant (JAG). A abstract of the JAG program does word that UCR knowledge on “violent” crime as a consider funding choices, nevertheless it’s not clear if that’s the unique customary.
“It’s a profound distortion of police exercise. It’s an exaggeration of police exercise,” he mentioned. “And in a specific space of intense nationwide dialog and policymaking—that’s, how will we management marijuana utilization? Ought to the police be concerned? The principal knowledge is being distorted by the supposed premier knowledge gathering intelligence.”
It’s unclear how lots of the hundreds of police companies that take part in UCR share MSP’s interpretation of the FBI steering, however a same-state instance of how important the arrest-to-citation disparity might be primarily based on a person company’s reporting is the truth that, after marijuana was decriminalized in Maryland in October 2014, reported hashish arrests in Baltimore Metropolis plummeted from 3,680 in 2014 to simply 509 in 2015, whereas in Montgomery County they had been reported to have truly elevated over the identical interval, from 3,296 to three,651.
The 2020 figures from Baltimore Metropolis present simply 10 marijuana arrests, in comparison with 1,298 in Montgomery County, which is without doubt one of the decrease numbers since 2009 however nonetheless roughly in step with sure pre-decriminalization years.
Right here’s a comparability of marijuana arrests reported to FBI from 2009 to 2020 within the two Maryland jurisdictions:
| Baltimore Metropolis | ||
| 2009 | 6,823 | 1,717 |
| 2010 | 6,784 | 1,847 |
| 2011 | 7,104 | 1,838 |
| 2012 | 6,586 | 1,751 |
| 2013 | 5,487 | 1,984 |
| 2014 | 3,680 | 3,296 |
MARIJUANA DECRIMINALIZED OCT. 2014
| 2015 | 509 | 3,651 |
| 2016 | 478 | 4,718 |
| 2017 | 563 | 5,135 |
| 2018 | 82 | 5,030 |
| 2019 | 25 | 3,715 |
| 2020 | 10 | 1,298 |
FBI didn’t reply to a comply with up request for additional clarification on the reporting tips.
“The precise variety of marijuana arrests is a statistic of nice coverage making significance, repeatedly referred to by Members of Congress in debating laws, and by state legislators and officers in debating state marijuana coverage,” Sterling wrote in his letter to the DOJ Inspector Common.
“Assertions concerning the civil rights penalties of those arrests and the diploma to which they’re being made in a racially disproportionate method is a serious subject of nationwide controversy. Falsity on this knowledge is distorting necessary nationwide debate concerning the conduct of the nation’s police and the diploma to which the legal guidelines are enforced impartially, or not,” he mentioned.
“The IG ought to examine why the FBI has corrupted the nationwide reporting on arrest knowledge to magnify the variety of arrests typically, the variety of drug arrests by requiring the false characterization of the issuance of civil citations for which no felony penalty attaches as ‘arrests’ equal to custodial arrests for heroin trafficking, rape or homicide. This coverage needs to be ended in order that native police will report precisely the small print of marijuana possession arrests.”
“Ideally, the IG ought to require that this knowledge be recalculated and a corrected model issued,” the letter concludes.
To make sure, FBI’s UCR has proven a notable lower in hashish “arrests” which might be made on the native and state degree because the marijuana legalization motion has expanded. But when different police companies in states which have merely decriminalized—and never but absolutely legalized—marijuana are reporting citations as arrests, the image that the annual UCR report paints could also be significantly skewed.
Learn Sterling’s letter to the DOJ Inspector Common on investigating FBI UCR knowledge assortment points under: