Criminal Justice Expert Panel

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Marijuana reform

Pardoning federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana will have meaningful social benefits that exceed any social costs.

Alex Tabarrok George Mason University
People convicted of possession in Federal Court may not be a random sample of simple users and may in fact have committed more serious crimes that the prosecutor couldn't prove--like convicting Capone of tax evasion. Still that's not the way the system is supposed to work and I approve overall of the change.
Felipe Goncalves University of California, Los Angeles
I support the policy, but the impact will be very small. There are few standalone federal convictions for marijuana possession.
Greg Midgette University of Maryland
Simple marijuana possession convictions are very rare today and sentences are pretty short. So, there's some notional value to removing a rarely enforced law from the books, but it would affect few recently convicted people. People who were sentenced a long time ago already paid the direct penalty of incarceration and the secondary costs of being labeled a felon. A long delayed pardon has few costs, but benefits might accrue mostly to politicians.
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Pardoning state convictions for simple possession of marijuana will have meaningful social benefits that exceed any social costs.

David Kirk University of Oxford
Few people in state prison for simple possession. If the government wants to reduce the use of incarceration further, it needs to think about its approach to violence.
Kevin Schnepel Simon Fraser University
While there is not a great deal of causal evidence suggesting large long-term benefits to expungement, any social costs associated with this reform are minimal. The largest benefits would likely be among individuals with very recent convictions and without convictions for other offenses.
Jamein Cunningham Cornell University
Pardoning individuals is just one step. Decriminalizing marijuana possession will only have positive spillover effects if local police do not shift patrolling activities to target quality-of-life offenses. If so, a less punitive approach to marijuana would likely be offset by a more aggressive approach to combating other criminal offenses. Therefore, decriminalizing marijuana should also be accompanied by new policing strategies to deter serious offenses.
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Moving marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a less-restrictive schedule or legalizing it at the federal level would have meaningful social benefits that exceed any social costs.

Rosanna Smart RAND Corporation
I can’t answer this because the HOW here is so important. The impacts of rescheduling are going to be fundamentally different than the impacts of federal legalization that (for example) allows commercial cultivation and retail sales, interstate commerce, etc. The likely effects of federal legalization itself will hinge critically on how the legal regime is designed and regulated as these specifics will shape price/availability, potency/product variety, and the functioning of illegal markets.
Emily Owens University of California - Irvine
At minimum, this would make it easier to conduct credible research on the costs and benefits of marijuana consumption, so society could have a more clear picture of the implications of expanded use.
Robynn Cox University of California, Riverside
Evidence is still relatively new here but so far evidence on recreational legalization and MML laws suggest legalization has either no effect or may even reduce crime. Although Blacks make up a disproportionate share of marijuana arrests, it is not clear whether passage of such color-blind laws will actually decrease racial disparities in arrests for marijuana. Finally, marijuana has medicinal purposes so it is debatable whether it should be a schedule I drug to begin with.
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The Criminal Justice Expert Panel is composed of leading academic social scientists who are regularly surveyed about what will work best to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Panelists hail from a variety of disciplines; what they have in common is their expertise in measuring the real-world effects of policies and programs on the outcomes that matter most. Our goal is to bring you their knowledge in a way that is timely, clear, and policy-relevant.

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