Anonymous asked this question on 4/6/2000:

I am trying to find out the percentage of jailed americans currently serving time for drug related offenses (using, selling, trafficing). could you point in the direction of web sites that might compile related data?

thanks

d_ottr gave this response on 4/6/2000:

All police departments must report arrest data to the FBI on a monthly basis. This data includes the type of offense, amount of loss (in the case of thefts and burglaries), age/sex/ethnicity of offenders, etc. The FBI in turn publishes a yearly report on the UCR, or Uniform Crime Reporting, results for the year. That may be a source for some of the data, but I am unsure as to where to find the stats on the actual number of INCARCERATED persons. You might want to try the Justice Department, the US Attorney General, at the government level. A group that I am aware of, though not a particularly well-structured group, is Amnesty 2000, a group that, at least prior to the new milleneum, wanted to free all those incarcerated in US prisons that were in for drug-related charges. Don't know if they have a web site, but maybe you could surf for them. They might have data on that. (yeah, rely on the so-called "enemy" for information! I think the military calls that "intelligence gathering.")

Other than that, I can't right now think of one location to find out all the info you need. Try those sites and see what you come up with.

d_ottr gave this follow-up answer on 4/6/2000:

I was just surfing around Amnesty 200, and got linked to the site:

http://www.csdp.org

Thye have a page on Prison stas (When you get to the site, scroll down the right column to prison, and click on that)

Once again, they may be the adversary of drug ENFORCEMENT, but they are usually pretty close on the stats. They are not broken down into trafficing, or other sub-categoreis, but you can get a failry good idea what you need.