Drug Use And Crime Essay

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

1b. List and describe briefly the major structures of the brain, as presented in your textbook, including the function of those elements that are most related to psychoactive drug reaction.

This particular age group is meant to receive support and motivation to explore their surroundings, however this can become problematic by use of illegal drugs. Families can have a dominant influence on how attitude, values, and behaviors of children is shaped. Peers tend to have a stronger influence than parents during the early stages of an individual's life. Research shows that marijuana use among adolescents was due to the fact that their friends and parents were drug users. Asides from that, family factors that escalate drug use include harsh discipline, failure to communicate on an emotional level and parental use of drugs, which serves as a poor role model for children.

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.

Drug abuse is shown to be connected to all different kinds of crime in the United States, and in many circumstances, crime is inspired by drug abuse and addiction. In fact, 80% of criminal offenders abuse drugs or alcohol (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). Also, 60% of those who are arrested test positive for illicit drugs when they are arrested, and 60-80% commit another crime, typically drug-related, after leaving prison (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). And, even after these individuals put in the time in prison that would allow them to go through the uncomfortable process of detoxing, 95% of them will chose to go back to drug abuse after prison (National Association of Drug Court Professionals). Given these overwhelming statistics, it is clear that drug abuse, and repeated or continued drug abuse, are a serious problem facing the criminal justice system.

Drug abuse and substance use have been categorized as a major reason for increased crime and rebellion amongst citizenly. Women, children and unemployed middle aged individuals experience increased crime rate as they are considered less contributors to general economic decisions. These include the inaccessibility of social amenities, lack of security and likely a surge in desperation to engage in misconducts that attract forceful interventions from existing

Drug usage is widely considered to be a black problem, but various studies have found that all races use drugs at roughly the same rates. Nonetheless, a 1995 issue of the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education found that 95% of the people who were asked to describe a drug user pictured a black person. The reason is that minorities are statistically much more likely to be arrested for drugs because minorities are aggressively pursued, arrested, and prosecuted. As a result, seventy-five percent of the drug offenders in state prisons are black or Latino. Consequently, minorities are also stereotyped as drug dealers, but they’re no more likely to deal drugs either. Even the former “drug czar” Barry McCaffrey acknowledged that most people buy their drugs from “their own race generally.”

The United States Correctional System is often challenged as to whether it wants to rehabilitate drug offenders or punish them, and because of this it mostly does neither. Even though drug abuse and drug trafficking are widely spread national issues, the mental, social, and economic costs of "healing" through incarceration are only making the "disease" worse. Never before have more prisoners been locked up on drug offenses than today. Mixed with the extremely high risks of today's prison environment, the concept of incarceration as punishment for drug offenders cannot be successful. Without the correct form of rehabilitation through treatment within Michigan's Correctional System, drug

A lot of people link drug abuse with crime, at times even with violent crime. This association comes from psychopharmacological association that imply that people may engage in criminal acts after taking some kind of substance known to undermine their judgment as well as self-control result in paranoid thoughts and distortion of inhibitions (Sewell, Poling and Sofuoglu, 189). Though all substances that affect the central nervous system might result in this kind of relationships, scientific information indicates that some type of drugs have a more strong effect than others. Such drugs are alcohol, cocaine, phencyclidine and amphetamines (McCauley, Ruggiero, Resnick and Kilpatrick, 136). Inversely, cannabis and heroin are less associated with desire to commit

Drug use in America is one of the major issues we face and the problem has skyrocketed over the past three decades. Heroin and painkiller addictions exceed all other countries. It is important that we address some of the causes that lead to the abuse, how to treat the abuse, and how to prevent the distribution of illegal prescription drugs.

Drug abuse and predatory criminality go hand in hand in a few, select social groups, while in others, drug abuse most often occurs without criminal behavior (other than the fact they’re doing drugs.) Despite what most might think, drug abuse typically follows predatory criminality. As drug abusers keep trying harder drugs due to necessity, the intensity of their criminal behavior escalates dramatically. When using more than one type of drug at one time, studies show that the frequency of criminal activity increases. But, when these drug offenders decrease the amount of drugs they put in their system, their rate of criminal activity also decreases, which shows that drugs can cause a person to commit crime. This shows that drug usage can cause crime and stopping drug usage can slow or even halt criminal activity.

Studies found as many as one-half of all homicide perpetrators and victims had been drinking, and a large proportion of violence occurs in places where alcohol is consumed. (Lowry) This phenomenon may be linked to psychoactive effects of alcohol. In addition to pharmaceutical effects of drugs, interpersonal violence may result from economically motivated crimes to support drug use and activities related to the supply and distribution of illegal drugs. (Lowry) Tobacco use amongst adolescents has also been associated with interpersonal violence and delinquency as part of a syndrome of problem behaviors that includes illicit drug use, early sexual intercourse, and school dropout.” (Lowry). Not only is it related to violence, it is a compounding problem in itself. It has been reported that “12- to 17-year-olds at drug- and gang-free schools, those reporting drugs and gangs at their school were nearly 12 times more likely to have used tobacco (23% vs. 2%), three times more likely to have used alcohol (39% vs. 12%), and five times more likely to have used marijuana (21% vs. 4%), according to the report.” (Mahoney)

A drug is a chemical substance applied into treating, diagnosing and preventing one from disease infections or a substance that is used by a person to enhance his or her physical and mental state in the perceived effect. Drugs used for different purposes and their effect depend on which cause for usage. It causes both positive and negative consequences directly to the user and in the long-run it affects the whole society or community. Drug addiction is the activity of uncontrollable dependence on a substance by the user no matter the harm caused by its usage. It is a habit that has been in many years hard to curb especially among the youths. “We must recognize that substance abuse and addiction is a disease, not a moral failing or easily abandoned self-indulgence,” (Califano, 2008).The cases of drug abuse have been on the rise over the recent years and resulted in crimes. The cases have a great effect affected the society in general since the reliable energetic youths have turned to drug abuse. However, some measures have been initiated to mitigate, curb and treat drug addiction in the society as outlined in the essay.

The “War on Drugs” is the name given to the battle of prohibition that the United States has been fighting for over forty years. And it has been America’s longest war. The “war” was officially declared by President Richard Nixon in the 1970’s due to the abuse of illegitimate drugs. Nixon claimed it as “public enemy number one” and enacted laws to fight the importation of narcotics. The United States’ War on Drugs began in response to cocaine trafficking in the late 1980’s. As the war continues to go on, winning it hardly seems feasible. As stated by NewsHour, the National Office of Drug Control Policy spends approximately nineteen billion dollars a year trying to stop the drug trade. The expenses shoot up, indirectly, through crime,