Drug Trends

Here's an interesting observation gleaned from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. It's the 10-year comparison of arrest rates between 1993 and 2002.

Over the 10-year time span, the U.S. Population grew by 11%. Over the same period, the number of U.S. arrests declined by 2%. Presuming the declines reflect fewer crimes, rather than fewer successful investigations, that's good news overall. Especially on the catergory-by-category breakdown:

• Murder arrests declined by 40.9%.
  
• Rape dropped by 26%
  
• Robbery, burglary, and motor-theft, each dropped by around a quarter (29.7, 28.4, 26.4)
  
• Violent Crime as a whole declined by 13.4% and Property Crime by a whopping 25.2%
  

If the overall arrest rate declined by 2%, but the arrest rate for violent crimes and property crimes fell by 5-10 times that amount, then what categories of arrested posted gains?

The most dramatic gainer is the statistically insignificant category of embezzlement, which saw a rise of 49.4%

The second biggest gainer? Drug Abuse Violations. These rose by a quarter of a million arrests, or 37%.

Here's a chart from the Sentencing Project detailing the absolute numbers of drug-offense prisoners: