A new study on Atlanta’s move to decriminalize marijuana concludes that, contrary to warnings from some critics, the policy change in fact led to a decrease in violent crime as police turned their attention to more urgent matters.
The research looks at crime surrounding the city’s 2017 reduction of penalties around the simple possession of cannabis. Prior to the change, possession of up to an ounce of marijuana was punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,500 fine. Afterward, that fell to a maximum $75 fine civil fine, with no possibility of jail time.
While some warned that loosening penalties would lead to a rise in crime rates, researchers observed the opposite.
“Our findings suggest that decriminalization led to a reduction in violent crime,” the new report says, “likely due to police reallocating resources from marijuana enforcement to violent crime prevention.”
To arrive at that conclusion, authors examined agency-level crime data from 2015 through 2018 from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports, which included information from nearly all Georgia cities with populations over 25,000. They then compared crime rates between Atlanta and other control cities that did not decriminalize marijuana.
Relative to those control cities, the “estimated effect” of decriminalization in Atlanta was “about 20 fewer violent crimes per 100,000 people per month,” the analysis found. That’s a 19.7 percent reduction from the pre-decriminalization average.
“Our analysis finds that violent crime in Atlanta declined relative to control agencies following marijuana decriminalization, with results robust to alternative estimation methods, event studies, and placebo tests,” the report concludes. “Our estimates suggest that decriminalization led to a 20% reduction in violent crime rates relative to pre-policy levels.”
The paper says the findings align with claims from Atlanta Police Department (APD) shortly after decriminalization that officers would “focus…on violent crime and crimes that truly affect people—things that endanger lives.”
“We want to fill jails with armed robbers, rapists, burglars, home invaders—we do not want to fill the jails with pot smokers. That’s the bottom line,” APD Public Affairs Director Carlos Campos said at the time, the study notes.
Atlanta’s decreases in violent crime, the study’s authors noted, “align with APD’s stated policy shift, as department leaders emphasized reallocating resources to violent crime enforcement.”
“Importantly, this decline was not offset by crime displacement in neighboring counties,” they added.
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