Drug Abuse In Prison

The United States has the world's highest incarceration rate. With five percent of the world's population, our country houses nearly twenty-five percent of the world's reported prisoners. Currently there are approximately two million people in American prisons or jails. Since 1984 the prison population for drug offenders has risen from ten percent to now over thirty percent of the total prison population. Federal prisons were estimated to hold 179,204 sentenced inmates in 2007; 95,446 for drug offenses. State prisons held a total of 1,296,700 inmates in 2005; 253,300 for drug offenses. Sixty percent of the drug offenders in prisons are nonviolent and were purely in prison because of drug offenses (Drug War Facts). The question then arises,

At one point in time the high percentage of men and women who are drug

Currently the United States is one of the major super powers in the whole world and one of the biggest growing country. The main topic of this research is how unfair the justice system is towards drug offenders and how much of a burden the prison population is in towards our country. My research will hopefully find that the drug offenders are being treated more harshly than any other offender out there and the fact that it does impact the amount of incarcerated individuals we have inside the prison and causing a prison population crisis.

people than any other nation and half of that population are imprisoned due to a drug offense

With President Nixon’s war on drugs still the go to method on dealing with illegal narcotics, the amount of drug offenders being sent to prison is still sky high. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2004 out of all the

In many large state prison systems, a mix of inmage ingenuity, complicit visitors and corrupt staff, has kept the level of inmate drug abuse constant over the past decade despite concerted efforts to reduce it. A recent increase in cell-phone smuggling has complicated matters, with inmates sometimes using phones to arrange drug deliveries. It seems that the prison wall has become less and less of a secure boundary. The mention of the game “Whac-a-Mole,” where, as soon as one pesky mole is smashed, another pops up, is applied numerous times to this endless battle. Drugs reach inmates in many well thought out ways. Visiting relatives and friends, by mail, by inmates smuggling in drugs dropped off by associates at off-prison work sites, and

According to the Rand Corporation, “the total number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased from 40,000 nationally in 1980 to 500,000 in 2010” (Kilmer). Not only do the individuals sentenced to prison for drug offenses suffer, but their families do as well. Nancy G. La Vigne,

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, out of the 1,316,409 people serving time in state prisons, about 206,300 people, or roughly 15.7 percent of these prisoners, had a drug offence as their most serious crime. In a different study done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics done in 2012, it concluded that of the 187,773 federal prisoners, 97,214 of these had drug offences as their most serious crime as well. The numbers are not lying; drug-related crimes are one of the largest reasons for incarceration in context of the United States legal system. These numbers are way too high, considering that there is an efficient way to effectively lower these digits. If these

Many prisoners are putting themselves at risk of suffering from the above-stated side effects. Additionally, the worst of all a person using the wrong precaution may be his/herself in danger of facing death (Thomas et al. 2016). In many instances, the side effect may cause fatal injuries to the human body leaving the person with lifetime disability and a having to live a different life full of

The number of individuals incarcerated in U.S. prisons has amplified, and a decent amount of inmates are substance abusers (“Alcohol, drugs, and crime,” 2015). It has been found that “80% of offenders abuse drugs or alcohol” and “Approximately 60% of individuals arrested for most types of crimes test positive for illegal drugs at arrest” (“Alcohol, drugs, and crime,” 2015). Those who use drugs are going to commit crime to feed their habit, which usually means committing crime, such as robbery or shoplifting for items to sell for drug money or stealing money itself (“Alcohol, drugs, and crime,” 2015). In 2004, inmates confessed that he or she broke the law to acquire money to buy illegal drugs (“Alcohol, drugs, and crime,” 2015). The illegal drug

When you operate a prison system beyond its maximum capacity it now creates a danger level for the officers running the prisons. A prison is already a hostile environment and when the prisoners outnumber the guards by such a large ratio it makes it ten times harder to control the prisons the way a prison needs to. This leads to a greater number of prison riots, attempted escapes and assaults on officers (Hough, 2008). On the same note, prison overcrowding causes more inmate to inmate violence because of the intolerable living conditions, some in which are considered inhumane and unconstitutional. Other violence erupts in prisons that are not widely discussed such as sexual assaults, rapes which lead to the spread of diseases within the prison and poor health conditions in areas such as cells, eating areas, latrines and showers.

In response to the success of the Dutch model, drug war advocates such as the former “Drug Czar” Barry McCaffrey have chosen to bash their policy. In 1998, McCaffrey actually asserted that the Dutch drug policy led to their murder rate doubling that of the United States. McCaffrey’s claim was terribly inaccurate as Holland’s murder rate has ranged anywhere from one fourth to one half of that in America during the 1990s. The Dutch murder rate has since remained at about one fourth of that in America. In fact, the prison population in America has soared; in contrast, the Netherlands actually shut down eight prisons in 2009 from a lack of demand.

According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are 207,847 people incarcerated in federal prisons. Roughly ( 48.69 ) are in for drug offenses. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, there are 1,358,875 people in state prisons of them, 16% have a drug crime as their most serious offense.Drug abuse is implicated in at least three types of drug-related offenses: (1) offenses defined by drug possession or sales, (2) offenses directly related to drug abuse (e.g., stealing to get money for drugs), and (3) offenses related to a lifestyle that predisposes the drug abuser to engage in illegal activity, for example, through association with other offenders or with illicit markets. Individuals who use illicit drugs are more likely to commit crimes, and it is common for many offenses, including violent crimes, to be committed by individuals who had used drugs or alcohol prior to committing the crime, or who were using at the time of the offense.

The war on drugs quickly became a war against criminals. Correctional facilities populace and expenditures reach tipping points, opening correctional facilities up to expensive, lengthy ligation process, and operational consequences

The War on Drugs has given birth to many of the modern day evils. The most widespread repercussion of the War on Drugs is the crime rate. “ In 1990, the number of people sent to state and federal prisons for drug offenses exceeded the number of offenders sent to prison for violent crimes…. Drug offenders currently make up 62 percent of the federal inmate population, up from 22 percent in 1980.”[3] Add to this the fact that most of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders put there under mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the explanation for why this country is running out of prison space should be readily apparent.