The United States federal mandatory minimums have been controversial not only because of the length of the mandatory sentences for even first-time offenders, but also because the eligibility quantities for crack are very small when compared to those for other drugs. This paper shows that the...

For almost two decades, Virginia has used risk assessment to justify “alternative” nonprison sentences for eligible drug and property offenders. In Study 1, we examined how frequently alternative sentences actually were imposed. We found that alternative sentences were given to only 42% of...

Simple OLS estimates of the effect of school-imposed penalties for drug use on a student's consumption of marijuana are biased if both are determined by unobservable school or individual attributes. The potential reverse causality is also a challenge to retrieving estimates of the causal...

Considerable resources have been spent on estimating the size of populations of people who use drugs (PWUD) and people who inject drugs (PWID) in Africa. Precise estimates are elusive, not least because of stigma and criminalization faced by these populations. Bio-behavioral surveys focused on...