NEW YORK — A new, 50-state study finds that putting more people in jail for drug offenses doesn't reduce drug use or overdose deaths.

On Monday, President Donald Trump called for harsher sentences, including the death penalty for drug traffickers, to combat the opioid epidemic. Jake Horowitz, director of research and policy at Pew Charitable Trusts' Public Safety Performance Project, said they compared states' drug imprisonment rates to rates of drug use, overdose death and drug arrests, and found no correlation at all.

"These findings reinforce a large body of prior research that casts doubt on the theory that stiffer prison terms deter drug misuse, distribution and other drug law violations,” Horowitz said.

New York, for example, ranked 41st for drug imprisonment and had 11.6 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents - a relatively low ratio. But Louisiana, with the highest incarceration rate in the nation, experienced overdose deaths at a rate almost 44 percent higher than New York.

But while increased incarceration rates have no significant effect on drug use, Horowitz noted that stiffer prison terms do have a dramatic impacts on everyone else.

"Putting more drug law violators behind bars for longer periods of time has generated an enormous cost for taxpayers, but has not yielded a convincing public safety return on those investments,” he said.

Since 1980 the number of Americans in state and federal prisons for drug law violations has exploded from fewer than 25,000 to more than a quarter-million. Horowitz said Pew has polled voters nationally and found broad, bipartisan support for reducing prison penalties for drug crimes.

"In states like Maryland we note 75 percent of voters agree that imposing longer prison terms is the wrong way to break the cycle of crime and addiction,” Horowitz said. “And these kinds of findings span from Louisiana to Utah, red and blue states across the country."

He added research shows the most effective response to drug misuse includes treatment, prevention and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders.


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Maryland has one of the highest percentages in the nation of people in prison who began serving time when they were juveniles.

A new report from Human Rights for Kids included survey results from more than 120 people in Maryland who have been in prison since childhood. It found nearly 70% had experienced six or more Adverse Childhood Experiences, the major upheavals in a child's life affecting their development, from abuse and neglect to incarcerated relatives and domestic violence.

Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said one concern is children in Maryland are automatically tried as adults if they're accused of any of more than 30 crimes.

"Because it's based on offense -- and not based on the individual circumstances of the offense itself, or of a young person's history, or of even considering the trauma that young people have experienced -- it means that just because of the offense, we are charging young people as adults," Balis explained.

The report showed 6% of Maryland's incarcerated population has been in prison since childhood. The numbers also include immense racial disparities, with more than 90% being people of color. The report recommended all cases involving a child start in juvenile court and courts be required to take Adverse Childhood Experiences into account during sentencing.

Balis also noted compared to adults, young people are more capable of change, which he argued should mean more effort is made to keep them out of the adult system.

"We want to do everything we can to steer them away from the system," Balis urged. "To prevent them from future offending, to fill their lives with good things, to keep them away from the justice system. Not to pull them deeper into the system and even into the adult criminal justice system, when we could serve them effectively in the juvenile justice system."

Other recommendations include prohibiting the use of solitary confinement for children and not housing children in adult jails and prisons.

Changes in federal law will permit West Virginia and other states to use Medicaid dollars to pay for health care services for incarcerated youths beginning Jan. 1.

In addition to helping kids get physical and dental health care, the new rules should give them needed resources to address mental and behavioral health challenges stemming from childhood trauma.

Elizabeth Crouch, associate professor of health services policy and management at the University of South Carolina, said mitigating adverse childhood experiences is a growing part of efforts to keep rural children out of the juvenile justice system and detention.

"A fifth of rural children are diagnosed with developmental behavioral mental health disorders," Crouch pointed out. "Rural children are more likely to be diagnosed with developmental behavioral disorders, such as ADHD, than their urban counterparts."

About 45% of West Virginia children experience adverse childhood experiences, a rate five points higher than the national average. The Medicaid coverage for youth in detention includes physical, dental and behavioral health screenings and case management services.

States are also taking into account neurocognitive research showing teen brains do not fully develop until the mid-20s. Crouch noted arrests of young people have dropped by more than 80% since the mid-1990s, as a greater understanding of childhood trauma has increased the number of alternatives to detention. Still, she acknowledged the challenges for rural kids are formidable.

"What we have found is that rural children have been disproportionately living in homes affected by current substance use or mental illness," Crouch explained. "Rural children have experienced much higher rates of opioid use."

Despite declining arrests and detention rates, young people of color are still far more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile facilities, according to The Sentencing Project.

The New York Police Department's new commissioner must address the agency's dwindling public trust as her tenure begins.

Jessica Tisch became the agency's top official after former commissioner Edward Caban resigned amid federal investigations. Past surveys show moderate trust in the department but a new survey of heavily policed neighborhoods paints a different picture.

Brett Stoudt, associate director of the Public Science Project, said it found people in such neighborhoods want crime handled differently.

"A significant number of these residents do not desire more investments in policing but instead desire approaches to public safety that invest in a broad set of supports and services, and institutions," Stoudt explained. "The kind that more fundamentally address the root causes of violence."

Other findings show people are fearful of their neighborhood's expanded police presence. Along with this, some said they have experienced physical or sexual violence from police officers. Stoudt noted this kind of policing mostly affects minorities in the city. The New York Civil Liberties Union finds Black people are 20% of the city's population, but were 60% of people police stopped in 2023.

Recommendations to fix the issues include increasing transparency for the department, firing officers who abuse their position for power and stopping the spread of misinformation from the agency.

Ileana Méndez-Peñate, program director for the group Communities United for Police Reform, said other recommendations aim to reduce the department's omnipresent role in some areas.

"The other policy recommendation related to that is the real need to invest in the fundamental needs of New Yorkers," Méndez-Peñate emphasized. "I talked about housing and education but also youth programs and services and quality city infrastructure through security. These are some of the top concerns."

There could be challenges to enacting the survey's solutions. One is the charter revisions passed on Election Day, since one of them gives the department more power. She added another challenge is financing, since the millions of dollars the city spends on the police department do not address the root causes of certain issues.


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