How much would ending federal cannabis prohibition & releasing cannabis related prisoners ease the federal prison over crowding problem?
The best estimate I’m aware of is that 10,000 federal prisoners in long term facilities are there for marijuana related crimes. There’s potentially larger population that is people reincarcerated for marijuana possession and use while out on probation, but as far as I’m aware, there isn’t a good study of this.
There are more than 5,000 federal crimes defined today. Most have never been prosecuted, and it’s so impossible to know of all of them that when the federal government itself tried to count how many crimes are defined, it failed.
We could do a great service to citizens, lawmakers, courts, and actual victims of real and meaningful crimes by repealing most of these statutes, but that would involve real and ongoing work by Congresspeople to make things better for little personal benefit, so I don’t expect it to happen.
