Under a policy to take effect later this month, prosecutors will charge such cases as summary offenses rather than as misdemeanors. People arrested with up to 30 grams of the drug - slightly more than an ounce - may have to pay a fine but face no risk of a criminal record.
"We have to be smart on crime," said District Attorney Seth Williams, who took office in January. "We can't declare a war on drugs by going after the kid who's smoking a joint on 55th Street. We have to go after the large traffickers."
The shift is a major move in a reform agenda being hammered out in an unusual partnership between Williams and two members of the state Supreme Court, Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille and Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, each of whom has a long background in criminal justice.
The goal is to sweep about 3,000 small-time marijuana cases annually out of the main court system, freeing prosecutors and judges to devote time to more serious crimes. The diverted cases amount to about 5 percent of the caseload in criminal court.
Police have been briefed on the policy shift, but appear less than enthusiastic about it.
"We're not going stop locking people up," Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, said Friday. He said marijuana possession remained illegal.
"We're going to stop people for it. . . . Our officers are trained to do that," Vanore said. "Whether or not they make it through the charging process, that's up to the D.A. We can't control that. Until they legalize it, we're not going to stop."
Some key aspects of the change remain unresolved.
Williams' top aides are still researching whether they can simply convert all the small marijuana arrests into summary charges of disorderly conduct. The shift might require a change in state law or in a city ordinance, his advisers say.
The new approach could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for the Philadelphia courts. While the amount has not been formally set, fines for minor drug possession would be $200 for first-time offenders and $300 for others.
"We are not looking at it as a moneymaker, but we could use those funds to focus on other efficiencies," said Castille, who was Philadelphia's district attorney from 1986 to 1991.
McCaffery, a homicide-detective-turned-lawyer, has talked of using some of the new cash to pay consultants to study further ways to reform the court system.
Castille called the new policy "appropriate" for a system loaded up with a total of 60,000 fresh cases a year, including the arrests of about 5,500 alleged heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine sellers.
Of marijuana possession, the chief justice said, "It's a minor crime when you're faced with major drug crimes." Taking those cases out of the city's main courtrooms, he said, "unclogs the system."
The new approach was endorsed by Chris Goldstein, a leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). His group has been quietly lobbying prosecutors and top Philadelphia narcotics police for change.
"The marijuana consumers of Philadelphia welcome this," Goldstein said.
McCaffery, appointed by Castille to oversee the ongoing shake-up of Philadelphia's criminal justice system, said the shift would help the courts focus on more serious cases.
"This will free up a lot of time in the courtroom," he said. "The fewer de minimis cases, the more time the judge and the prosecutor are going to have on other cases."
The new policy on marijuana is part of a wave of changes under review in response to The Inquirer's investigative report on the criminal justice system, "Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied," in December.
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