Courses

Adam Bates

Policy Analyst

Cato Institute

Adam Bates is a policy analyst with Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research interests include constitutional law, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, police militarization, and overcriminalization.

Bates received a BA in Political Science from the University of Miami, where he also walked onto the Miami Hurricanes football team, and both an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and a J.D. from the University of Michigan. He is a member of the Oklahoma bar.

Blog Posts

Every 25 seconds: Human Rights Watch and the ACLU document more harms from drug prohibition

October 26, 2016
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War on Drugs

A new report from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch details many of the harms associated with the criminalization of drug possession. The most striking finding from the report is that police in the United States arrest more people for marijuana offenses than for all violent crimes combined. The title of the report, “Every 25 Seconds,” refers to how often police arrest someone for drug possession in this country. The full report can be found here, but other key findings include: More than one out of every nine state-level arrests are for drug possession, amounting to 1.25 million arrests per