The Cook County state’s attorney’s office will no longer prosecute most misdemeanor marijuana possession cases and will defer more low-level drug offenders to treatment programs, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced Monday.
The initiative will also create a program referring low-level juvenile drug offenders to community organizations for drug education and mentorship.
“While our financial resources are shrinking in Cook County, violent crime is not,” said Alvarez, citing the impracticality of prosecuting “offenders who are non-violent and have a drug addiction” instead of combating “illegal guns and gangs.”
With her decision, Alvarez joins the ranks of prosecutors elsewhere in the nation taking similar steps to deal with what they say is an ineffective and expensive war on drugs.
“The methods in which we are handling low-level drug cases here in Cook County are simply not working,” she said. “Under the current policies and practices, we continue to see the same individuals revolving in and out of our criminal justice system with no meaningful impact or outcome and at a significant cost to taxpayers.”
Alvarez said the goal of the new policy is to prevent these repeat offenses by treating addicts, stressing that the drug epidemic is a “public health issue.”
Her office conducted an in-depth analysis over the last year that studied the cost-effectiveness of the screening and prosecution of drug cases and also reviewed drug policies of other major prosecutors’ offices around the country, according to her office.
It reported that cases for Class 4, or low-level, felony possession of recreational drugs including marijuana, cocaine or heroin made up about a quarter of the nearly 40,000 felony cases handled by the state’s attorney’s office in 2014 in addition to more than 15,000 misdemeanor marijuana possession cases.
Oak Forest Police Chief Greg Anderson said he agreed with Alvarez’s decision to seek treatment for low-level drug offenders because addiction frequently motivates them to repeat their crimes.
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Oak Lawn Police Division Chief Randy Palmer also supports treatment over incarceration for minor offenders struggling with addiction, saying “if they’re getting help, I’m all for it.” But Palmer said he rarely encounters addicts among those the police department arrests for minor drug violations.
“Put it this way: I can’t tell you the last time I saw an addict,” he said, adding that “maybe 70 percent” of the low-level drug cases in Oak Lawn are “kids with a bit of weed.”
Oak Lawn has an alternative system to protect young or first-time offenders from entering the state criminal justice system — ticketing them rather than arresting them and assigning them to a village hearing, where they can receive a fine between $50 and $500, Palmer said.
Anderson expressed concern that not everyone arrested for a minor drug crime should avoid prosecution.
“Obviously the prosecution of cases is up to the state’s attorney’s office one way or the other, but I believe it should be on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “Some people arrested for low-level drug offenses should be prosecuted if they have a history of violence or other crimes.”
Alvarez’s new policy means her office will no longer proceed with misdemeanor charges for possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana for people with fewer than three arrests or municipal citations for similar charges. The office will refer people with three or more arrests or tickets on such charges to the state’s attorney’s existing drug school and dismiss their cases once they complete that program’s requirements.
However, the new policy’s rules for Class 4 felony drug possession cases are different. Such offenders without violent backgrounds will be directed to an alternative prosecution program, including the newly created Drug Deferred Prosecution Program that will “link these offenders with treatment and other social services,” according to Alvarez’s office.
Anderson expressed concern as to the potential cost of the new treatment program.
“The big issue is, where does the money come from for all of the treatment?” he said. “Wherever there’s an action, there’s always a reaction, so I hope they have the funds to support it.”
Steve Campbell, a spokesman for Alvarez’s office, said he did not have an estimate yet of what the new program would cost.
Meanwhile, Anderson said the prosecutor’s office’s new policy would not deter his officers from arresting people for low-level drug possession.
“We’re not handling anything differently going forward,” he said. “The point is, if you don’t charge them, there won’t be a record, they won’t get in the system and they won’t be able to get the treatment, So us walking away will not help anyone either way.”
Anderson said he didn’t expect the state’s attorney’s office to consult him on such matters, deferring to them on how they handle prosecutions. Palmer agreed.
“We enforce the law, and they prosecute,” he said. “We don’t have the authority to say you definitely need to charge this guy or that guy. We defer to them to make that decision.”
He said officers in Oak Lawn would not change the way they conduct arrests as a result of the new policy, but that the treatment programs could be “another tool in the box,” both for offenders who need help and for police and prosecutors with heavy caseloads.
Alvarez is the latest prosecutor to say publicly that current drug laws do little good for low-level offenders — both for those arrested and to offices such as hers that spend millions of dollars and hours prosecuting the same people over and over.
“This really is an acknowledgment that the traditional law enforcement remedies for people with drug addictions who act out criminally because of those drug addictions is simply not successful,” said Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Oregon’s Caltrop County and a board member on the National District Attorneys Association. “Prosecutors are on the front lines of this, we are sitting six feet from these people in court, and we just realized that putting the casual and incidental drug addict is not a good use of money and resources.”
Others have reached the same conclusion. In New York, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson announced in July that he would stop prosecuting most people arrested on low-level marijuana possession charges, saying, “we are pouring money into an endeavor that produces no public safety.” Four months later, New York’s police commissioner, William Bratton, said officers who catch people with small amounts of marijuana would issue a summons instead of making an arrest.
Prosecutors say there is evidence that such efforts are effective. In Seattle, for example, the University of Washington this month released a report that found that participants in a program aimed at keeping addicts and prostitutes out of jail and in housing, counseling and other programs were 60 percent less likely to be arrested than those in a control group.
Tara Kadioglu is a freelance reporter.
The Associated Press contributed.