Just Cause or Just Because Prosecution and Plea-Bargaining Resulting in Prison Sentences on Low-Level Drug Charges in California and Arizona

As average sentence lengths have increased and spending on prisons and incarceration has risen, many have begun to question whether we are punishing one segment of the criminal population - low-level drug offenders - too harshly. Indeed, some ballot initiatives, such as Proposition 36 in California and Proposition 200 in Arizona, succeeded in part because voters agreed with these perceptions. These trends beg the question of how many low-level drug offenders end up in prison and what course of events led them to receive a prison sentence.

In this report, we examine the original arrest charge(s), filing
charge(s), plea-bargaining processes, and criminal histories of offenders who ultimately ended up in California and Arizona prisons on low-level drug charges. Although many thousands of offenders receive jail sentences for low-level drug offenses, we examine only prison sentences in this report.

Excerpt taken from above report's Introduction.