Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati

A guest article by Michael Earl Patton.

Cincinnati City Council’s major crime-fighting initiative this year has been to “enhance” the penalties for possession of small quantities of marijuana.  Critics have said that this is a diversion from the real problems of the city, and with the soaring number of murders already at last year’s total, it appears that the critics are right.

In the 6-month report given to council recently, the police stated that there had been 2,330 arrests using the new ordinance.  Of these, 1063 have resulted in conviction so far, with hundreds of cases still pending.  If all of the convictions resulted in a 30-day jail sentence, then that means 31,890 jail-bed days.  Divide by 185 (since the actual period is a little over 6 months) and one gets a little over 172 jail beds.

In other words, it looks like the Cincinnati marijuana ordinance, by itself, may be using up 172 of the jail beds in the county.  If one multiplies the 31,890 jail-bed days by the cost to keep prisoners, which is about $55 per person per day, then one gets an expenditure of about $1.75 million.

It is also interesting to note that the police report that the total amount of marijuana seized was 15,894.94 grams, for an average of a little under 7 grams per arrest.  How much is 7 grams in everyday terms?  Well, a penny weighs about 2-1/2 grams, so this is less than the weight of 3 pennies.  And 7 grams is the average weight, which means that many people—probably most—were arrested for possessing less than this.

With the recent budget cutbacks proposed so that the city can hire more police officers, one has to ask if this is the best use of resources.  Robert R. Ryan, a Republican who lobbies for reform of the drug laws, says, “If if had spent his much money and written such a report I would be fired or seriously reprimanded.”

A video of the police report is also available on YouTube.

Thank you for reading (and printing from) The Cincinnati Beacon.