Washington, DC: State courts convicted more than 59,000 marijuana offenders on felony charges in 2000, according to a report released this month by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Overall, marijuana felons comprised 6.4 percent of the total 924,700 felony convictions in state courts. Marijuana trafficking convictions were 2.7 percent of the conviction total, and marijuana possession convictions were 3.7 percent of the total. Marijuana offenders comprised slightly less than 20 percent of all felony drug offenders.
The DOJ report did not break down the percentage of marijuana felons sentenced to jail. However, among felony drug offenders, those convicted of drug possession were sentenced to jail for an average of 20 months, the report found. Those offenders convicted for drug trafficking were sentenced to jail for an average of 35 months.
According to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report, law enforcement annually arrests an estimated 723,627 persons for marijuana violations. Nearly 90 percent of those arrests are for marijuana possession only, an offense most states treat as a misdemeanor and not a felony.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation, at (202) 483-8751. Full text of the report, “Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2000,” is available online at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fssc00.pdf