Criminal Justice Populations

Current Size of Population

A wealth of information is reported annually by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The statistics available from 2005 indicate that the number of individuals involved in the criminal justice system is immense—over 7 million. At that time, nearly 1.5 million people were in prison, and an additional 750,000 were in local jails. Further, the number of parolees is on the rise at nearly 790,000, and the number of individuals on probation and supervised release is a staggering 4.2 million. Drug arrest rates for the adult population indicate that nearly 1.7 million individuals were arrested for a drug-related crime; for juveniles, the number of arrests for drugs was nearly 200,000.

Drug Use and Crime

Drug-related crime is generally on the rise. In 2004, BJS estimates for state and federal prisoners were nearly identical, with 17% to 18% of convicted criminals stating that they had committed a crime to obtain money to purchase drugs. Of those arrested for such crimes, violent crime accounted for 10% of state and 18% of federal convictions; property crimes accounted for 30% of state and 10% of federal convictions, public order crimes accounted for 7% of both state and federal convictions, and around one quarter of all state and federal prisoners had been convicted of a drug crime. Hence, even if someone convicted of a crime is imprisoned for something other-than-drug offense (e.g., in a plea agreement), there is a relatively high probability that drugs were in some way related to the offending behavior.

Another way to examine the relationship between drugs and crime is to consider those that were under the influence of a drug at the time they committed an offense. The National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that more than 5 million individuals (over 12 years of age) were victims of violent crime in 2004. Perceptions by those victims suggest that nearly one third of the offenders were using alcohol or other drugs at the time the victimization occurred. This estimate increases to around 40% when examining college student victims specifically and to a similar range when examining workplace violence. Interestingly, these estimates of perception did not differ remarkably from surveys of state and federal prisoners, where around one third of this group admitted to having been under the influence at the time that the offense for which they were arrested had occurred. These estimates were slightly higher for prisoners who had been imprisoned for drug-specific offenses.

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