| Abstract: | In mirroring society's uneasiness about punishing certain types of drug use, both the academic and popular literature presuppose that the United States criminal justice system processes drug law violators with more ambivalence than it processes other types of offenders. This assumption has provided and still provides support for a more intolerant handling of drug offenders. Through the use of Offender- Based Transaction Statistics, this study examined the validity of this belief in ambivalence by comparing event-history processing data on felony-level drug, property, and violent arrestees. The findings raise questions about the assumption of ambivalence, and they point to the necessity of maintaining in thought and action the distinction between “noncomplaint” and “complaint-generating” offenses. |
