Drug Addicted Offenders In Prisons

Many different states have begun sending nonviolent drug offenders to various kinds of drug treatment program the state offers. By doing this, it has significantly reduced the problems with overcrowding. If an individual is arrested and charged with simple possession of a drug and no other crime is being commented, then this person is doing no harm to anyone else. They should be given the opportunity to try and make a change in their life and beat the addiction. Instead, if this person is thrown into jail, they are still going to be an addict with a criminal record now and will not be able to be a contributing member of society. (Everett 1 ).

The probation officer explained to the observer that these individuals come in individually because the details of their case are more private than the others on Drug Court. In a very similar fashion, the Drug Court proceeded by the Judge asking for input from the probation officers as well as the service agency representatives. The observer noticed the main theme of Drug Court is for Judge Barrasse to verify the time spent in sobriety from each person. Upon hearing the answer, the entire room would respond with an applause. Unlike MHC, Drug Court consists of a series of four phases in which one graduates from in order to complete the entire program. The individual moves through the stages at the recommendation of the probation officer and in agreement with the treatment providers.

The goal of these programs is to provide treatment to reduce recidivism of inmates and provide them with treatment that will allow them to rejoin society. For the participants drug court acts as an intervention program. It functions by “addressing the problems associated with drugs use, learning skills to avoid relapse, increasing family involvement, and promoting accountability for offenders” (Goetz & Mitchell, 2006).

The United States is desperately in need of prison and criminal justice reform. The current system miserably fails at lowering recidivism rates, limiting prison populations and rehabilitating drug and alcohol addicts. This is because very few prisoners receive drug treatment in prison, and those who do receive inadequate treatment. Fortunately, there are a multitude of upcoming drug treatment techniques that have proven effective in treating addiction. As a result of refining drug treatment in American prisons, not only will more drug addicts overcome their addiction, but the prison population will be reduced and the United States improve financially.

To be more specific, incarceration for crimes relating to drug or drug-use currently, “account[s] for more than half of all the charges levied against prisoners” (Dual Diagnosis). It is obvious that the punishment of mandatory sentencing does nothing to benefit drug users or the society they re-enter into as this statistic proves to be re-occurring every year. Instead, the goal of the criminal justice system and federal prisons should be mandatory supervised rehabilitation and treatment of individuals with their drug addiction, a required vocational based treatment program that goes along with their jail sentence time, and after sentence programs and checkups. All which would be mandated by a drug court system

In this article, the information is pulled from a study of inmate self-report surveys from 2002 and 2004 to examine characteristics of the prison and jail populations in the United States and assess why so many drug-involved offenders are incarcerated. After the U.S “war on drugs” in the 1980s, a large number of drug-using offenders were sent to prison and jail for long periods of time. As with this influx of addicted offenders, interests also grew in community-based drug treatment with justice system oversight as an alternative to incarceration. Overall, drug courts were implemented on a national scale and operate in a wide area of the U.S. Empirical research conducted over the past two decades indicates that, on balance, drug courts are more effective than conventional correction options at reducing the drug use and criminal activity of drug-involved offenders.

I believe the percentages of Hispanic and African Americans incarcerated contributes to non-violent offenders placed in the American prison system. As of December 24th, 2016, 82.415 persons detained were locked up for drug offenses. Drug offenses made up 46.4% of all the listed offenses for imprisonment (Federal Bureau of Prisons, n.d.). Of those in prison, 110,871 were white, 71,647 were black, and 63,198 were Hispanic (Federal Bureau of Prisons, n.d.). It is my opinion that decriminalization and drug reform would improve drug infested communities, get non-violent drug offenders out of our prison system and assist communities to resolve the violence that follows substance abuse.

Considering costs and the swelling inmate population. It has become imperative to find ways of keeping offenders from reverting to crime. Thereby reducing the amount money devoted to new jails. Intensive substance abuse treatment programs have become an important part

Nonviolent drug abusers have no significantly beneficial rehabilitation programs to fix their addiction and must be placed or forced into programs that are created to repair the broken lives. Simply incarcerating drug abusers does not fix their problems. In most cases it makes their addiction worse. Prisons need to develop better and more extensive rehab programs and although rehab programs are beneficial “Some inmates will refuse to comply with rehab program. Along with not complying they are just

thrown in as an option (Kramer et al., 2009). After implementing the restrictive sentences thousands of individuals were still rearrested; this method did not work unless the threat of going to prison was added (Horne et al., 2015). Treatment facilities that help drug offenders showed a link between drugs and crime that gave policy makers an opportunity to make mandatory minimum sentences, treatment sentencing, and various intervention programs a coping mechanism in the criminal justice system (Kramer et al., 2009). These alternatives did not solve the problem of drug abuse (Kramer et al., 2009). Rehabilitation centers may work to steady the drug addiction, but it may not always work for those who are dependent on drugs (Kramer et al., 2009)

Because convicted offenders tend to be locked up for longer periods than jail offenders, treatment possibilities in a prison setting are more far-reaching. The prison and treatment staff are in the best position to establish

There are approximately 1,600,000 million inmates are behind bars in America (Glazer, 2014, para. 11) . Without a doubt, much of state prisons are overcrowded, which can lead to, very dangerous situations and environments. Due to the overwhelming number of inmates incarcerated it is difficult to deal with medical and mental health problems in prison. If most inmates complain about not feeling well or have symptoms, medical condition or disease that is not immediately, they would get some form of medication and get turned life back without seeing a doctor for a proper medical exam. A clear majority of the health care professional that work in the prison systems are very under qualified to work in such dangerous and trauma environments like prisons

Those incarcerated today are not given the chance to change their behavior patterns, especially when it is in regard to drug addiction. The criminal justice system in general does not consider drug abuse as anything but a crime and does not think about treating the disease of addiction in order to reduce or eliminate the crimes that come as a

One of the most profound problems that plagues our society is drug addiction. With drug addiction comes those who offend and have run-ins with the law. Our country deals with these drug-addicted offenders by placing them in jails for a year or longer, only to have them come back out to society when their sentence is over. They are still drug-addicts and so they return to the street only to commit yet another crime. From here the cycle of crime, arrest, jail, and return to society continues, solving absolutely nothing. Therefore, placing drug-addicted offenders in jails fails to confront the major problem at hand which is that of the drug abuse. If drug-addicted offenders were placed in drug treatment centers instead of being incarcerated,

In today society drug use, has become a worldwide epidemic. “You find drug addicts roaming from place to placed and asking for money on the street. Most of them don’t have a place to live and gather in abandon houses and homes to do drugs, like crack, cocaine, and heroin, these drugs and some prescription drugs are habit forming, People who become addict to either of these drugs can’t function enough to keep a job, so they end up stealing to support their habit. But should a drug addict go to prison for stealing to support their habit, would this end their addiction and stop them from stealing again once release from prison.