NORML’s New Arrest Report Data

Crimes of Indiscretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States, compiled by Jon Gettman, PhD is a comprehensive study reporting and analyzing national arrest data between 1995 and 2002. This online version contains the original downloadable full report in PDF format, various other browser-friendly extracts from the report and NORML’s Marijuana Arrests Investigator Flash tool, a companion application specifically designed for this project where you can create custom maps of arrest data dynamically from search parameters you enter.

Very cool (I love good data).
I’ve looked over the data briefly, and the one thing that strikes me is that any way you look at the data, arresting people for marijuana serves no useful purpose. In fact, some data graphs appear to have a reverse correlation.
The racial statistics are disturbing, though not particularly surprising.