Jail Populations

Drugs have been known to be detrimental to American society. Commonly known as “ The war on drugs”. Majority of individuals who are incarcerated have been convicted of some type of drug offense and if not a drug related crimes. In many instances, a person can be sent to a jail or prison without receiving the required treatment to help the individual overcome their drug of choice. Remarkably, there is a court solely focused on an individual with a drug problem, which is known as Drug courts.

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,

Since the origination of drug treatment courts, there has been countless numbers of offenders who have successfully completed the program and fought their way past drug abuse. There are also a handful of offenders who may have struggled to change their drug abuse or addiction, and fell short of completing the program. In this second part of my report, I will be determining whether drug treatment court programs actually work. To accomplish this task, I will be reviewing three empirical studies to evaluate how effective the program truly is.

Currently, America incarcerate a higher percentage of its citizens than any other industrialized nation in the world. The negative impact of addiction to alcohol and drugs on American culture and society is inescapable. Although various treatment models have been developed and implemented over the years, a monumental number of people struggling with substance dependence continue to be under treated. Whereas, many people are questioning the criminalization people face because they ingest or consume drugs, for the most part, the criminal justice system focus more on incarceration instead of rehabilitation for the offenders and addicts.

Just as there are supporters of drug courts who will attest to their success, there are an equal amount of critics who believe that drug courts are ineffective. One of the main factors that has been noted as the reason for the program’s lack of success is that since each state regulates its own program, it’s hard to effectively

The United States government has a high mandatory minimum for first time nonviolent drug charges. Therefore, offenders stay in the prison system longer and facilities are not able to properly provide the necessary accommodations to catch up due to the increase of non-violent prisoners that fill the system. According to the article “Tests for Reducing Prison Populations” by Erik Eckholm, one of the problems is that the United States government is trying to come up with better mandatory sentencing and strengthen the crumbling rehabilitation system for nonviolent prisoners (1). The Overcrowding of prisons within the United States is an issue that needs to be addressed because there are too many tax dollars being spent, prison sentences change or do not necessarily fit the crime, and drug offenders and nonviolent criminals, who need services other than prison time, are draining the system.

Currently, drug courts have been proven to be successful at reducing recidivism of offenders. In the United States there are about 120,000 people receiving help in order to rehabilitate them and to try to reduce the chances of recidivism (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2011). These programs require individuals to participate in the programs for a minimum of one year. During this year the individuals are required to appear in court and be drug tested at

There needs to be a change in the criminal justice system. Convicted felons who are charged with any drug felony should not be put into jail or prison because it doesn’t help solve the problem. Rudy Haapanen states, “It is now generally agreed that the criminal justice system fails to rehabilitate offenders, to make them less likely to commit criminal acts as a result of treatment or training; that the system fails to deter potential offenders, to make then less likely to commit criminal acts out of fear of penal sanctions”. In this paper I will discuss drug use in the population, drug dealers, drugs and regulations. I will discuss drug use in the population so that you will see

Over the last few decades, the American criminal justice system has seen an increase in the amount of drug offenses being committed. While the number of drug offenses have increased, the amount of resources for addicts who are in prison have not. Although it has been made clear that drug abuse and crime are linked, the justice system has continued to punish offenders, rather than allowing them treatment. The lack of resources provided to prisoners who have issues with addiction has contributed to the cycle of recidivism in the American criminal justice system.

In the early to mid-1980, there was a drug epidemic in urban cities across the nation. As a result of this, Congress created the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which gave drug offenders a higher sentence in the criminal justice system. Over the past thirty years, the United States has seen an unprecedented rise in the rate of incarceration. Between the years 1972-2000, the rate of incarceration has risen at an astonishing rate of 500%. This act in particular, had no toleration towards these offenses, consequently leading to the disappearance of probation “federal courts sentenced [twenty-six] percent of convicted drug offenders to probation. By 2014, the proportion had fallen to [six] percent, with judges sending nearly all drug offenders to prison” (“Public Safety Performance”). Not only has the rate of incarceration increased so has the sentences for these offences “from 1980 to 2011, the average prison sentence imposed on drug offenders increased [three] percent—from 54.6 to 74.2 months—even as it declined [three] percent for all other offenders” (“Public Safety Performance Project”). This leads to the larger issue in the incarceration system, which is that penalties do not match the offenses. With the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 in practice, it influenced the establishment of a five-year mandatory minimum for small drug traffickers. If a

However, when evaluating all of the research comprised of this study, there was some shortcomings that should lead future researchers to seek several unknown questions such as: what is the basis needed for drug treatment in traditional prisons since it isn’t offered regularly?, and what is the ratio of drug treatment programs as compared to prisons throughout the nation?. These questions can aid in the argument of a need for drug treatment programs as opposed to just prison. It could also prevail how drug treatment is limited in areas that may need it the most. Thus, for future analysis researchers should evaluate what traditional prisons really have to offer as far as drug treatment, what is the criteria for eligibility of treatment and the length that they can access treatment? If measured, this data can be an asset to improving traditional prisons treatment options and also provide the effectiveness of drug treatment in prison for a lengthy time compared with the treatment at an actual drug treatment program.

Substance use and addiction are often the driving force responsible for placing these individuals into prison in the first place. Authors Annelle B. Primm et al. (2005) reported, “An increased portion of the federal criminal caseload was accounted for by drug prosecutions between 1982 and 1999 (21-236%) while 70% of jail inmates during 1998 had been convicted of a drug offense or had abused drugs regularly.” They further state, “The Bureau of Justice statistics reported that 4 in 10 violent victimizations involved alcohol use; parolees, jail and prison inmates used alcohol (40%) and drugs (20%) at the time of their offense: and two thirds of jail inmates were involved with drugs prior to admissions to jail” (p. 562). Perhaps an individual broke certain laws while under the influence of illicit substances, or they committed crimes in order to feed their drug habits.

The article of “The Justice Policy Institute of 2008 on Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety” emphasized the beneficial effects of treatment for the drug abuser in the criminal justice system (Jama, 2009). These interventions include therapeutic alternatives to incarceration, treatment merged with judicial oversight in drug courts, prison- and jail-based treatments, and reentry programs intended to help offenders transition from incarceration back into the community. Through monitoring, supervision, and threat of legal sanctions, the justice system can provide leverage to encourage drug abusers to enter and remain in treatment.

Drug courts are considered to be one of the most successful innovations to be implemented in the criminal justice system. It was first implemented during the height of the drug war hysteria and the long epidemic of the skyrocketing rates of incarceration. According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (2010), drug courts are a “specially designed court docket, whose purpose is to achieve a reduction in recidivism and substance abuse among nonviolent substance abusing offenders and to increase the offender’s likelihood of successful habilitation through, continuous, and intense judicially supervised treatment, mandatory periodic drug testing, community supervision, and use of appropriate sanctions and other rehabilitation services”. Drug Courts were first launched in 1989 by the Miami-Dade County area of Florida. A local prosecutor by the name of Janet Reno and a few other criminal justice professionals grew tired of seeing the same faces and same cases reappear in court so their solution to the problem was to combine drug treatment within the court-like structure. The number of drug courts since then have proliferated to nearly 3,400 across the United States as of June 2014 (NIJ, 2015). More than half target adults and a growing number of juveniles, families, veterans, and various other case types. The innovation of drug courts alters how the court system handles and monitors drug involved cases and integrates the treatment aspect into their primary goals.

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