Essay On Deontology And Criminal Justice

Countries all over the world are dealing with a rise of drug use and drug-related public health concerns. Many nations adopt vaguely similar methods of battling the “War on Drugs”, from strict border control to harsh criminal punishments for drug-related offenders, violent or not. Even with these efforts put in place, many places are not seeing the desired results. Drug use is mainly treated like a crime, and that may be the problem. Countries that have concerns with rising drug use among their citizens should follow Portugal in decriminalizing the possession and use of small quantities of all illicit drugs.

According to the Durkheimian perspective, the public sees drug use as an unacceptable behavior and recognizes it as a threat to morality and values. As such, drug users must be punished in order to restore societal harmony and deter future offenses. The increasingly punitive reaction to drug use in the 1980’s can be seen as a reaction to the public’s increasing perception that drugs are a threat to the moral fabric of society. By inflicting severe punishment on drug offenders, the community is satisfied with the knowledge that drug addicts are paying for

“Drug policy regarding the control of the traditional illicit substances (opiates, cocaine, cannabis) is currently moving through upbeat times in almost all Western countries. Prohibition on the basis of repressive law enforcement not only seems to fail on a large scale, but also to create vast additional costs, problems, and harm for drug consumers, who often find themselves in extreme social, economic, and health conditions” (Fischer 1995: 389).

In our current model, penalties for drug possession and use are so severe that once a young person is penalized it is difficult, near impossible for them to recover and be a productive member of the society. Decriminalization, on the other hand would encourage users to honestly discuss their drug use with health experts who will act as advisers and not adversaries. In Portugal, for example treatments are recommended for those who have drug problems; repeated offenders are accorded non criminal punishments like suspension of their driver's license or banned from specific neighborhoods known for drug use (Hart, 2013, p. 325). This is a far cry from how drug offences are dealt with here in the United States. It is not uncommon for fines for drug possession to range from anywhere from $100 to $100,000 or more in this country. This is an immense amount of money when taken in light of sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh's documentations that most dealers make the same amount of money if they had taken employment at McDonald's (Hart, 2013, p. 187). Jail sentences range widely depending on the crime charged, the type of drugs involved, and the state's laws, can range from a few days or weeks to 10 years or more in prison. This leads to former inmates exiting from prisons as hardened criminals who

The source of the vitriolic criminalization of people who use drugs stems from the perspective of drug usage being a representation of moral weakness, or even of “willful misconduct” rather than a health issue. The view of people with addiction as inherently violent has led to the emergence of widespread opioid addiction being treated as a law enforcement issue. This stigmatization of drugs and the people who use them will be discussed further below.

While the United States could still be considered a relatively new nation in terms of the overall global picture, its prison system is one of the most advanced in the world. It was founded out of basic necessity, based on tried and tested principles of European design, and evolved to

President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs was an absolute failure that has resulted in tens of thousands of non-violent criminals being placed in the same federal prisons as murderers and rapists. In fact, these non-violent offenders make up a little over fifty percent of the prison population. Most of the taxpayer money spent on keeping these people in prison can easily go to treating addiction had drugs simply been decriminalized. In 2001, Portugal had decriminalized all drugs and found that there were little to none adverse effects on drug usage. In fact, drug related pathologies such as STDs and drug related deaths had actually decreased (Greenwald). Some drugs such as marijuana has almost no major side effects, and the legalization and taxing of it can easily both benefit the government, and take power away from the drug cartels. Economist Milton Friedman once said, “If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug

Attorney’s fight everyday to ensure the rights of their clients the “Victim”. Today even with new laws being put into the law books that help victims when violated, the courts are still not looking out for those individuals who have in fact be victimized. “Advocates for victims’ rights have long complained that they have been sidelined by a criminal justice system that is focused on the interplay between the state and the defendant”. (Boland & Butler, 2009)This statement alone dictates how the system actually works when it comes to the victim in court. Most individuals lose sight that there

Drug and alcohol use is considered to be one of the major issues in the world today. Drugs can impair us, causing us to make poor decisions as well as cause permanent damage to the body. Deontology is an ethical theory that maintains that actions are not justified by their consequences; one should do what is morally right as it is their duty. What is morally right in the eyes of a deontologist is determined by universal moral laws, cultural norms, and religious views. This paper will analyze the morality of drug and alcohol use through these views.

Nicholas Kristof writer for The New York Times since 2001 and two-time Pulitzer prize winner offers a heartbreaking, yet accurate, look into the world of drug abuse. Kristof’s writings often focus on health, poverty, and gender issues throughout the world. As drug related deaths see no decline on the horizon, many call for an end of the outdated policies established to manage the threat. In his article “How to Win a War on Drugs” Kristof compares the strategies being used by the U.S. to those of Portugal. The main takeaway is that Portugal is a shining example of how to deal with the epidemic of drug abuse effecting so many countries around the world, and how poorly America is doing comparatively.

Crime and drug use in Portugal has been a major issue, however after the government instated decriminalization, the number has decreased. Decriminalization appears to have had a slight positive effect on crime. “With its recategorization of low level drug possession as an administrative rather than a criminal offence, decriminalization inevitably produced a reduction in the number of people arrested and sent to criminal court for drug offences from over 14,000 in the year 2000, to around 5,500-6,000 per year once the policy had come into effect” (tdpf). There has not been a great surge in contact between drug offenders and the Portuguese police after decriminalization. The number of offenders has had the highest values since 2002. Continues was the trend manifested through the decade of the predominance of presumed offenders in the possession of cannabis and the increased offenders in the possession of cocaine. Now regarding heroin, it did have a downward trend in the first half of the decade, which then peaked in 2009, following another decrease in the numbers of offenders. The value that was taken in 2012 was the lowest it has ever been since 2001. "Concerning the sanctions applied in these convictions, mostly related with trafficking crimes, such as occurred in 2004 and contrary to previous years, these convictions involved mainly suspended prison (48%) instead of effective prison (31%). To refer specially since 2009, the increase of convicted only sentenced with an

Portugal has garnered a large amount of attention since adopting a new method to combat drug usage. They have moved to decriminalize low scale drug possession and usage instead of an incarceration of low level offenders. Many nations have desired to reevaluate their own regimen of substance control and the way abuses were handled. The Portuguese government has collected a plethora of data while the implementation of their drug governance changed. The statistics gathered have shown that current United States policies would benefit from changes in its rabid criminalization of substance abuse.

Being incarcerated has a huge effect onan individual’sphycological health. A paper by US health & Human Services notedthat some prisoners get so used to being in prisons, they find it hard to integrate back intosociety due to the trauma and phycological damage they suffered in jail (Haney, 2001).The paper goes on tofurtheroutline some major issues faced by ex-inmates such as being parents, making decisions,andjust proving that ex-incarcerated addicts will not go back to their old habits.It could possibly improve their dependency on it due to the trauma and the hardship of jail, and it might even cause them to commit serious crimes to feed their addiction.Legalizing drugs can alsoreduce the number of drug users. In 2001 Portugalintroduced a new legislation which decriminalized the possessionof illicit drugs, and began treating drug addiction as a mental issue rather than a criminal punishment. Due to thisthey foundthat drug users, and the amount of deaths related todrug use has also lowered in numbers(Portugal`s decriminalisation policy, 2014).This proves that the legalization of drugs may just be the right option to provide our society a sense of security and safety.

For several decades drugs have been one of the major problems of society. There have been escalating costs spent on the war against drugs and countless dollars spent on rehabilitation, but the problem still exists. Not only has the drug

In 2001 Portugal decriminalized possession, acquisition and consumption of narcotic substances for personal use. Ten years later irrefutable empirical evidence points to the fact that decriminalization did not lead to a spike in the number of drug dependent persons or an increase in drug related violence. On the contrary numerous studies show that there has been significant decline in petty crimes related to drug consumption like theft, because of availability of methadone treatment, decrease in HIV incidence amongst injecting drug users, along with reduction in recidivist crimes (Domoslawski, 2011)