Unpacking New York City’s Marijuana Arrest Rates

Cannabis consumption rates are virtually indistinguishable by race. Arrest rates are not.

Background.

We dug into New York Comptroller Scott Stringer’s cannabis legalization report and found some stats that showcase the disproportionate impact cannabis’s criminalization has had on New York’s most vulnerable communities.

A List of Neighborhoods with the Highest Average Marijuana-Related Arrest Rates in New York. Image courtesy of New York City’s Comptroller’s Office.

The stats.

• Of the 10 NYC neighborhoods with the highest rates of marijuana-related—three are in Brooklyn, three are in Manhattan and four are in the Bronx. Nearly half of the Bronx’s neighborhoods are in the top ten.
• Brooklyn—with nearly one-third of the city’s marijuana-related arrests—had the most arrests of any borough (followed by by Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island). In Manhattan, the marijuana-related arrest rate in East Harlem was 13x higher than its direct neighbor—the Upper East Side.
• The 10 neighborhoods with the highest rates of marijuana-related arrests have an average poverty rate of 32.5%—more than double the rate of the 10 neighborhoods with the lowest rates of arrests (14.3%).
• Seven of the 10 lowest-income neighborhoods in the city (based on median household income) are also in the city’s top 10 when it comes to rates of marijuana-related arrest rates.
• The unemployment rate in four of the five highest-ranking neighborhoods is more than double the citywide unemployment rate (5.2%).
• The arrest rate in the highest-ranking neighborhood (Brownsville) is ~30 times higher than the lowest-ranking neighborhood (Forest Hills/Rego Park). Forest Hills averaged four arrests per month, Brownsville averaged four per day.
• In 2010, one of every seven arrests (and one of every five misdemeanor arrests) made in New York City were for the lowest level marijuana possession charges.

Image Courtesy of the NYC Comptroller’s Office

• From 2010–2017, 51.3% of marijuana-related arrests were of Black people. 35.2% were of Latinx people. This means there were ~8x as many arrests of Black and Latinx people as there were of white people (86.5% vs. 10.5% percent).
• The data showed your race and geography worked together to determine the likelihood you’d be arrested for marijuana in New York City. The ten NYC neighborhoods with the largest Black and Latinx populations accounted for over one-third (35.1%) of all arrests. The ten neighborhoods with the smallest Black and Latinx populations? 6.9%.
• Age also factors into it. 55.9% of all arrests were of people under the age of 25.

*This analysis—which was largely conducted by New York City’s Comptroller’s Office in 2018—is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Arrest data is from the period 2010 to 2017). We also pulled from the Drug Policy Alliance’s “$75 Million A Year: The Cost of New York City Marijuana Possession Arrests”