Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I don’t disagree.

I disagree with conservative/libertarian bloggers who rail against the MSM, who bitch about bias, who bitch and moan about misleading reports, and who then mislead without care to support their beliefs.

In recent news, it was reported that jail/prison populations have been steadily increasing. We now have about 2.2 million inmates in this country at any given time..

From SayAnythingBlog, the post opens, “This isn’t good…” as it leads in to blockquote parts of the article. Good or bad is certainly questionable. Bad because its expensive? Bad because we’re being too tough? Good because we weren’t tough enough before?

It’s bad, we find out, because “In 2003 we put over 771,000 in jail for marijuana-related charges alone, and 89% of those jailings were for simply possessing the substance.”

Ok, hold on to that.

[A]ssuming the number of marijuana-related arrests remained somewhat consistent from 2003 to last year (and in all likelihood they went up) it is safe to say that 38% of the 2 million or so people we put in jail every year are put there for using a relatively mild drug that has an effect on humans that is not much different than alcohol. Or, not any worse anyway.

“Safe to say?” Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not sure if the poster, Rob is, biased, stupid, or ignorant.

Comparing simple, yearly arrests to prison populations is impossible. Want to compare arrests to arrests? Fine. Want to compare populations to populations? Fine. You cannot compare, in any meaningful sense, one to the other.

I pointed out as much in the midst of 45 other comments. No one seemed to notice. As in so many debates, it seems, there is little room for understanding the underlying facts before moving forward.

From a past S.A.B. post linked to from the one above, factoring in the 89%:

That’s 686,728 thousand people investigated, arrested, indicted, tried, convicted, sentenced and jailed for using a relatively mild drug that has an effect on humans that is not much different than alcohol. Or, not any worse anyway.

A note from the FBI report cited (link to full, 538 page .pdf document) [emphasis mine]:

In the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, one arrest is counted for each separate instance in which an individual is arrested, cited, or summoned… One person may be arrested multiple times during the year; as a result, the arrest figures in this section should not be viewed as a total number of individuals arrested. Rather, this section provides the number of arrest occurrences that were reported by law enforcement.

Again, a pile of bad comparisons were made by the poster. Rob compares people to to arrests. He compares arrests to convictions. He turned arrests into convictions. These bad comparisons were made last October. In fact, the first comment of 31 makes the point (before being mostly ignored):

My guess would be that in a lot of cases the “arrest” is nothing more than being given a citation like a traffic ticket, I know that’s what happens in Texas. Those who are arrested pay a fine and go on their way. It’s a source of revenue, not a drain of resources. That’s what happened to my neighbor’s son 2 years ago, he had less than 4 ounces so he got a $[1]250 fine + taxes(gotta include them)and was out of munincipal court in less than 20 minutes…

Now, seven months later, Rob has made another pro-weed post based on erroneously comparing prison populations to pot-related convicts, which were erroneously derived from pot-related convictions, which were erroneously derived from pot-related arrests.

“Fake but accurate” has been thrown out the window for what I will call “Bullshit but I don’t care!”