Assessing the Impact of Cannabis Decriminalization on Racial Disparities in Chicago’s Cannabis Possession Arrests

Black and Hispanic neighborhoods have suffered the most severe consequences of the “war on drugs.” As the war on drugs waned, cannabis legalization/decriminalization efforts increased across America. A prime example of decriminalization occurred in August of 2012 as the City of Chicago introduced a new law providing officers with option to ticket, rather than arrest, individuals caught in possession of 15 grams of cannabis or less. As cannabis policy continues evolving, it remains to be seen whether or not the trend toward decriminalization will produce equitable changes in drug arrest outcomes across racial/ethnic groups. We employ data tracking cannabis arrests over time by neighborhood to assess the impact of cannabis decriminalization in Chicago and estimate racial disparities in the likelihood of arrest (v. ticket) using two sets of models: within-neighborhood models and hierarchical logistic regressions with random effects. We find that Blacks and non-White Hispanics are more likely to be arrested than ticketed for minor cannabis possession in Chicago following the introduction of the Alternative Cannabis Enforcement (ACE) program, regardless of the neighborhood where the arrest took place. In addition, Black neighborhoods did not experience the same reduction in arrests after the law changed in comparison with racially mixed, White, or predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods. Our findings draw attention to the differential deployment of discretionary policing strategies across neighborhoods of different racial/ethnic composition. Although Chicago’s ACE program has lowered the overall rate of cannabis arrests, major racial/ethnic disparities in those arrests remain and become exacerbated when examining macro neighborhood-level trends.