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California And Four Other States Point The Way For States To Downgrade Drug Offenses And Reduce Prison Populations [witnessla.com]

 

In fives states over the last five years, voters and lawmakers have downgraded felony drug possession to a misdemeanor. California was the first in 2014, with Proposition 47. Then came Utah (HB 348) and Connecticut (HB 7104) in 2015, and Alaska (SB 91) and Oklahoma (State Question 780) in 2016.

new report from the Urban Institute looks at the effect of these reform laws on prison populations, economics, and communities and how other states might fare if they followed the lead of CA, UT, CT, AK, and OK where the bills and measures were approved with bipartisan support.

While the five state laws are not all exactly the same, each shared three important details. First, the laws all made simple drug possession (until at least the third conviction) misdemeanors, rather than felonies. Second, the laws made it so that convictions for simple drug possession did not land people in state prison (also at least until the third conviction). Third, the five laws all applied to virtually all controlled substances, and do not give specific weight limits.

[For more on this story by Taylor Walker, go to http://witnessla.com/californi...-prison-populations/]

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