Reducing Recidivism And Substance Abuse

As a future therapist, I have a goal of opening a non-profit community based program focused on reducing the recidivism rate in San Diego, California, and rehabilitating nonviolent male offenders. Once these individuals are released from jail, many of them have a difficult time assimilating successfully back into society. Often, they have limited resources, job skills, housing, or money. There is a stigma associated with jail and prison. With nowhere to turn and often very few resources these individuals end up reverting back to the life of crime. For many of them, they are out of options and resources. The purpose of this primary intervention program is to develop a program that will assist the men with resources with a goal of helping them

Drug court is a court given responsibility to handle drug addicted offenders through comprehensive supervision, drug tests, treatment services, and immediate sanctions and incentives. Drug court offers individuals facing criminal charges for drug use and possession a chance to open up to a substance abuse recovery program instead of jail time. The requirements of drug court are strict because staying clean or off of drugs is a hard road to stay on. A person on drug court is tested frequently, they must attend substance abuse recovery meetings and make regular court appearances in order to abide by the requirements of drug court. Drug court programs bring the full weight of all interveners (judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, substance abuse

A long-term study conducted by Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the average five-year recidivism rates of 404,638 prisoners released in 2005 is 76.6% among thirty states in America (Matthew, Alexia, & Howard, 2014, p. 1). In other words, most of the released prisoners did not escape the cycle of recidivism and were sent back to the prison after time. This indicates that the present American justice system, which focuses on punishment as Benson (2003) noted, fails to rehabilitate prisoners efficiently and is far from achieving the goal of reducing crime rates (p. 46). What is more, the recidivism of prisoners is becoming a great plague of society, because it not only imposes a threat to public safety but also places an enormous

It is well known that offenders serving time in prison often leave with honed crime committing skills instead of correcting the issues that brought them there. With the hopes of changing this cycle in-custody treatment programs have become more and more popular sentencing avenues for judges, D.A.’s and prison classification administrators.

Many things people take for granted like being taught manners, or how to act in certain situations were not provided to many offenders at the right time in their lives. This will allow the inmate a chance to prove to not only themselves, but to society as well that they can be an upstanding citizen. Because of the program dedication at cutting recidivism, the recidivism rate has dropped from 27.3 percent in 2010 to 22.8 percent in 2013. The program is working slowly but surely, by trying to deprogram the criminalistics behavior, while instilling proper behavior before

Samples-Martison would conduct a six-month 231 study from books of literature on rehabilitation and what works in reducing recidivism from the year 1945 until 1967.

Leaders at the Federal, State, and Local levels are constantly seeking ingenious methods to reduce the costs of criminal justice and corrections. It is agreed that violent offenders should be in maximum security facilities, however establishing alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders have become a necessity (e.g. DMI, Project HOPE, The 24/7 sobriety project). Due to the overcrowding and budget issues, methods have been devised to increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system while maintaining public safety. “The cost per day for a client in jail or prison is $107.71 as opposed to alternatives (e.g. Drug Court $10.33; DRRD $6.60; Probation .33)” (Piquero, 2010). There

Intervention and prevention programs play a big role is reducing recidivism. As we know some programs can be beneficial, however some others have less effect on reducing recidivism. However there are three principal of effective Intervention: The risk principal, the need principal and the treatment principal. First let’s look at Risk principal which focuses strictly on individuals that could benefits from the program. Not every program can be applied to all offenders or all at risk individuals. Each program has its own targeted population which is very important that intervention program is targeting the right group of individuals. For example we cannot simply target city that has lower poverty level. Because it doesn’t mean that everyone who

Imprisoning offenders may provide comfort to some in terms of public safety, it does little to reduce a cluster of issues that are bound to follow. These people will cycle in and out of the nation’s corrections system and eventually with the addition of newcomers, it will result in prison crowding. Instead of building more prisons, the National Center of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found a less costly and more effective way to reduce recidivism. They found that reconnecting ex-offenders to the world of appropriate employment is essential to maintaining recovery and reducing criminal behavior in the future. Drug treatment can be more effective than cycling people in and out of prison. Underemployment and joblessness

Amanda Agan is a postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton University. Sonja Starr is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Agan and Starr put an emphasis on the “Ban-the-Box” policy, where this policy serves to stop employers from asking an applicant’s record until at the end of the application process. These two authors performed an experiment to determine the barrier to employment for ex-convicts and if Ban-the-Box policy is able to do to its purpose. This article or experiment would be used to talk about the current policies to reduce recidivism and their effectiveness.

The United States is leading the world in the number of people incarcerated in prisons. Mass incarceration has become a topic of debate with an estimated 2.3 million people behind bars. All states combined spend over 52 billion on corrections and correction related activities annually (Gorgol & Sponsler, 2011). The US justice system has placed a great deal of focus on locking people up without equally focusing on how to prevent people from revolving in and out of the prison's doors creating an unbalanced system. What can reduce the recidivism rates and help incarcerated individuals successfully reenter society? Higher education is at the forefront of ways to reduce recidivism, and

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate methods for decrease recidivism among formerly jailed population who have mental illness or substance abuse problems. The first section of this literature review explores programs on help people with mental illness or substance abuse, the second section discusses finding health care for them and lastly, the third section reviews effective discharge planning.

Offenders that have done their time and that are released back into society with the expectation to become productive members of society come face to face with struggles unknown to the average citizen. Discrimination, lack of education, insufficient housing, and no access to treatment programs are hardships they face everyday. Without the appropriate support structures in place, before and after their release, increases the probability of recidivism in the offender. Statistics show that more than one third of offenders released back into society will be incarcerated again within a year of the release date. To decrease the probability of offenders being re-incarcerated it should become mandatory for prisons, state and federal, to utilize

Since crime in America is at an all-time high, the correctional system should utilize funding received to implement the use of more programs like the R-N-R (Risk, Needs, Responsivity) program methods in more Correctional facilities to reduce crime, address specific needs of mid and high-risk offenders, and the reduction of recidivism rates.

Rehabilitation is the most effective alternative to prison due to the high percentage of incarcerated non violent drug users. There are over two million prisoners in America’s prison system, and about one-fourth of them were convicted for drug offenses (Mitchell par.1). Not only do rehabilitation facilities help with the problem of prison overcrowding, but also helps individuals with sobriety and keeps them away from the drug-related activities. Sending drug addicts to prison does not cure them of their diseases; it only makes their