The
United States has only 5 % of the world’s population, but 25 % of its
prisoners. The biggest contributing factor to our booming prison
population? Drugs, drugs, and more drugs.
The Coalition Against Drug Abuse has just released a report
investigating how federal drug sentencing varies across the country,
pulling statistics from a 2013 report by the United States Sentencing
Commission. They’ve packaged their findings into a series of simple maps
and infographics, which give us a detailed picture of just how much the
response to drug related offenses varies from state to state. Still,
the bottom line is clear: If you’re convicted of a trafficking offense
in a US federal court, there’s a good chance you’re going to serve
years.
Looking at
the top map, we can see that drug sentencings vary starkly across the
country, with Western states locking more people away for meth, states
along the Mexican border coming down hard on marijuana, and Eastern
seaboard states tending to incarcerate for crack, cocaine and heroine.
The infographics below break things down further, revealing which states
are more or less likely to incarcerate a person for a drug offense, and
how sentence durations vary.
A few interesting observations:
- Crack and cocaine (combined) are the drugs that most frequently send people to prison in the US, while pot comes in a close second.
- You really don’t want to be caught trafficking drugs in South Carolina, or Wyoming.
- The proportion of drug-related sentences in West Virginia is nearly double the national average, reflecting the state’s aggressive response to its high drug overdose death rate. (Don’t do drugs in West Virginia.)
- New Mexico has the highest number of trafficking sentences (21.8 per 100,000 residents) but the lowest average time incarcerated (34 months). It’s apparently a revolving door in New Mexican prisons.
Have a look at the numbers yourself:
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