prison population after 1980 is the result of jailing drug offenders (the mandatory sentencing statutes for drug-related sentences did not exist in 1980). Thus, the bulk of prisoners are drug offenders, with non-drug offenders accounting for only about 33% of the prison population increase. The number of people imprisoned for drug offenses tripled from 1986 to 1991. In Washington State the number of prisoners serving time for drug crimes has risen 1,000% since 1980(Kopel1994).
To clarify the data further, one might ask: What is the change in reported use of cocaine and other hard drugs since 1986? Use of the moving average technique (which will be explained in chapter 4) results in an expected increase in use of 2.75%. Has it continued to increase? Could actual use be declining, despite an increase in arrests and incarceration of drug offenders? Drug use among the household population (past month, or current use of any illicit drug) is down from its peak of 25,399 (14.1%) to 13,035 (6.1%). Although adolescent drug use increased from 1992 to 1996,it leveled off in 1997 (Office of National Drug Control Policy 2002). Some suggest that law enforcement has caused it to go down. Further, what is the racial composition of offenders and their socioeconomic status? Is there anything distinctive about these data that could point to a need to reexamine problem definitions? In fact, the case suggests that African Americans have been hit disproportionately by the war on drugs. What is the proportion of African Americans in the 67% increase in prison population caused mostly by drug offenders? According to 1998 figures, the incarceration rate for African Americans is eight times that for Caucasians (The Economist 1999b, 31), and a large proportion of African Americans are in prison for drug offenses. The case is not clear on this, and a fuller understanding of this issue would be a usful piece of missing information for the analyst.