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This is a bad idea, and I will explain why its a bad idea even if you think marijuana should be legal:
None of these people are actually in prison because they had weed on them. They are hardened criminals, who also happened to have weed on them and that was the easiest thing to prove, so that is what the AG who wanted to preserve his 100% conviction rate went with.
According to CNN, "Officials said there are currently no Americans serving prison time solely on federal simple marijuana possession charges." So, no one is actually being released because of the pardons.
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This seems plausible, but can you provide any evidence for this claim?
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/media/publications/culpeper%20and%20johnson%20foundations'%20report%20on%20substance%20abuse%20in%20prison%2C%201998.pdf
"it appears that few inmates could be in prison or jail solely for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Indeed the number is likely so small that it would have little or no impact on overcrowding "
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/behind-bars-ii-substance-abuse-and-americas-prison-population
Of all drug defendants only 2.3 percent—186 people—received sentences for simple possession, and of the 174 for whom sentencing information is known, just 63 actually served time behind bars.
https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2021-guidelines-manual-annotated
Those are the sentencing guidelines.
Here are some illustrative examples you can use the guidelines to doublecheck:
Simple possession of marijuana (say you are caught with a big ole bag of weed) is, at most, a level 4 offense, carrying a sentence of 0-6 months for first time offenders and up to a year for those with a criminal history. Acceptance of responsibility (aka plea deal) would reduce the offense to a level 2. At level 2 anyone without a Class VI criminal history has a recommendation of 0-6 months, and a VI would be 1-7 months.
The next level of possession would be if you had 2-4 kilograms of marijuana. That is a Lvl 10 offense. So 6-12 months for a first time offender, 24-30 for a Class VI criminal. LVL 10s are allowed to be pled down to lvl 8, which would make it 0-6 months for a first time offender. With 8 pounds of weed! That's enough for Havard's whole student body to get high for the weekend!
The fact that only 2.3 percent of all drug defendants received sentences for simple possession in no way supports your claim that those pardoned are "hardened criminals," because that data says nothing about what other crimes those people might or might not have committed.
Of course, there are certainly people who are convicted of both marijuana possession and, say, robbery. But:
those are not the people you are talking about; you explicitly claim that "They are hardened criminals, who also happened to have weed on them and that was the easiest thing to prove, so that is what the AG who wanted to preserve his 100% conviction rate went with." That means you are saying that they were not convicted of additional crimes.
If someone was indeed convicted of both possession and robbery or other serious crime, pardoning their possession offense does not get them out of jail; they still have to serve the sentence for robbery.
Nor do your references to the sentencing guidelines say anything about what other crimes these people did or did not commit.
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in advance, probably not. check the outcomes for the people who've been pardoned, over the next decade or so. If the above is correct, you'll see very bad outcomes relative to the general population.
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It has the critical advantage of being very easy to prove (or frame, for that matter).
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Well that sure points towards deeper problems with the system that still doesn't justify keeping marijuana illegal just to act as a crutch for overly cautious prosecutors.
You can maybe convince me that many guys are in prison for worse crimes than marijuana possession even if that's all it says on their sentencing form. That's not going to make me conclude that marijuana legalization is 'a bad idea' unless keeping it illegal it is literally the only and/or least harmful way to keep these guys from causing further problems for society.
It wouldn't completely justify marijuana laws, but it should decrease your estimate of the harm caused by marijuana laws.
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If you think public servants being lazy and covering their asses points towards deeper problems with the system you're never gonna like any system.
This is reminds me of Japan which has very little crime and very high convictions rates. A lot of crimes are difficult to prove in the American system but possession of drugs or guns are easy to prove.
Chicago on hot weekends use to keep evidence on small time drug dealing so they could pick up people if they thought violence was going to occur. Pick them up on a Friday and drop the charges on Monday.
I don’t love these games for civil liberty reasons but they do have effectiveness.
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CORRECT, for most definitions of 'system.'
But this happens to be a system I have extensive personal experience with (at the state level) so I'm particularly averse to allowing the abuses of regular, peaceful people to continue in the name of protecting us from the relatively small number of serious offenders.
Prosecutor's offices will adapt to the new circumstances and maybe we'll have a slightly better equilibrium at the end of it.
If Marijuana criminalization is necessary as a tool to enforce other laws (which I do not grant) then maybe we just openly say that rather than maintain a farcical legal regime.
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