Recommendations
To New York City Elected and Law Enforcement
Officials
- Provide publicly the explanation for and
supporting factual evidence establishing the oft-asserted causal connection
between large numbers of arrests for marijuana possession and increased public
safety and crime control.
- If the goal of the arrests is to
reduce violent crime, explain how marijuana possession arrests are tailored to
do so and provide empirical evidence that massive marijuana arrests do, in fact,
promote this goal.
- If the arrests are to further other public safety objectives,
identify the objectives, explain how marijuana possession arrests are tailored
to serve them, and provide empirical evidence that they in fact do so.
-
Ensure that
marijuana arrest policies and practices conform to basic human rights and
constitutional law requirements regarding the right to liberty—which is
violated by unlawful or arbitrary arrests—and the right to be free of
racial discrimination which, under international human rights law, can be
violated even without racist intent on the part of police or public officials.
