Assessing the Impact of Drug Decriminalization on Jail Admissions in Washington State, 2020-2022

• In Event: Poster Session 1

Abstract

In recent years, US drug policy has been shifting away from punitiveness associated with The War on Drugs, towards fairer, more equitable legal consequences and greater focus on treatment. In February 2021, Washington State decriminalized possessing a small quantity of drugs as result of the Supreme Court’s Blake Decision declaring the state's longstanding felony drug possession statute unconstitutional due to lack of criminal intent. The decision resulted in calls for state legislators to “fix” the statute. Recriminalization of drug possession, as a misdemeanor, occurred five months later. These successive shifts parallel growing public sentiment to reorient penalties for simple drug possession. We sought to understand how these changes in drug policy affected rates of jail entry (i.e., pretrial bookings) for drug possession, as well as the magnitude of change in any existing racial or gender disparities. Analyzing quarterly observations of nearly 9,000 pretrial bookings for drug possession over 2020 through 2022 using descriptive and predictive means, we found that decriminalization led to an immediate and sizeable drop in pretrial jail admissions, which remained low even after recriminalization. Although complicated, racial disparities seemed to increase rather than lessen with liberalization of drug policy. Sex differences went unchanged.

Authors

• Christian P. Maynard, Washington State University

• Jennifer Schwartz, Washington State University