Relationship Between Drug And Crime

Prisons where essentially build to accommodate a number of prisoners but over the years it has reach over capacity. Today in the United States there are approximately 193,468 federal inmates that consisting of the Bureau of Prisons Custody, private managed facilities and other facilities. The inmates ages range from 18- 65 with the median age being in their late 30’s. This number is counting both male and female population with male being 93.3% of inmates and females being 6.7%. The number of inmates has steadily increase since 1980 with only having approximately less than 50,000 but today the number has gone more up. Drug offenses are the highest number for inmate’s imprisonment, the next highest offense would be weapons, explosives and arson; immigration and miscellaneous fall next in lines. The number for the other offenses such as robbery, extortion, fraud, bribery, burglary, larceny, property offenses and other offenses are lower. Overcrowding prison has become problematic as the prison population continue to increase leading to proper care and attention for prisoners.

Criminal Justice is a science that uses facts, experience, and opinions to develop standards that help shape the decision-making process. Legal empirical researchers are using statistical analysis to categorize crime data. Combining both data and legal analysis, this concept led to a new movement of a development of law. Statistics show there are 2.3 million incarcerated in correctional facilities in the United States. At the State and Federal prison systems, one in five prisoners is incarcerated for a drug offense (Peter Wagner). Maryland has more than 20,000 inmates, 58% were for nonviolent offenses, costing the state close to 1 billion dollars per year. On average one inmate costs the state over 37,000 dollars

The United States is five percent of the world’s population and has twenty five percent of the world’s people incarcerated. This is the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Mass incarceration has been a problem in this country for decades. The war on drugs has increased the odds of incarceration and the length of sentences for non-violent offenders. Ninety five percent of prisoners have plead guilty and one out of five are serving sentences for drug related charges (REF).

There are currently over two million people in our nation 's state and federal prisons and jails. Nearly one and a half million of these offenders occupy state and federal prisons, serving over a year in detention for felonies.(1) The most alarming statistic is the fact that the United States houses twenty five percent of the world 's inmates. A good percentage of these convicts are serving time for drug crimes, most of which are first time,

The number of people incarcerated in America has steeply risen since the beginning of the War on Drugs. In 1980, about 300,000 individuals were in jail. (Alexander, 2010) In 2000, the number rose to over one million, and at the start of 2008, there were 2.3 million adults in prison in America (Pew Center on the States, 2008). These increases in the rate of incarceration are traceable to the War on Drugs (Nunn, 2001). “Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration in the United States (Alexander, 2010).” Drug offenses account for two thirds of the rise in the federal prison population between 1985 and 2000 (Nunn, 2001).

Drug related crimes are committed daily even by American citizens, but the crime rate in the U.S as risen tremendously due

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.

In 1986 a law was put into place requiring judges to sentence drug offenders to a minimum of five up to twenty years in prison (Knafo). Before this law one quarter of drug offenders were sentenced to probation and rehabilitation programs or simply fined for smaller drug charges (Knafo). Today, nearly ninety-five percent of all drug offenders are sent to prison because of the mandatory minimum sentencing laws (Knafo). If judges and prosecutors sent twenty percent fewer drug offenders to prison, the government can save nearly 1.29 billion dollars in costs (Knafo). Nearly half of the U.S. prison population consists of non-violent criminals that include charges from fraud, theft, drugs, and immigration (Knafo). That is nearly fifty percent of taxpayer dollars that can saved, if not, at least used for programs that can help those in need of treatment to speed up recovery. Fifty percent of over two million people in the criminal justice system is a substantial amount of room

Another major subset in the overall prison population in the U.S. is the growing rise in incarceration rates of drug offenders. Professor Blumstein notes that when considering the growth of incarceration rates by specific type of crime, such as murder, robbery, assault, burglary, drugs, and sex offenses during the two decades from 1980 to 2001, the single most important result was that the prison rate for drug offenders increased by a factor of 10; moreover, these drug offenders currently account for the largest percentage of both state and federal prison populations (Blumstein, 2011).

According to Murray (2013), In 2011 the Bureau of Prison’s reported drug offenders constitute for 46.4 percent of the state prison population and 60 percent of the federal population. Many persons arrested were actively engaged in drug use around the time of their arrest. Current urinalysis surveys of persons arrested in twenty-two major cities in the U.S indicted that roughly over half of arrestees tested positive for at least one illicit drug. While 45 percent of state prisoners and 41 percent of federal prisoners say, they were under the influence of drugs when they committed their offence. Therefore, It is clear that drug related behavior takes up a significant part of the prison population.

Drugs can also affect someone’s likelihood to commit crime because of the effects it has on the person while they are under the influence. Drug use can affect an individual’s speed, memory, alertness and reactions. Crimes related to drugs or alcohol may be the result of the effects that the substances have on their thought processes and behaviour which causes them to commit criminal activity.

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

There has always been a close association between drugs and crime. Drugs have been seen as a way out of suffering in one’s life and so as long as there is suffering there will always be a market for drugs. The struggle to keep one’s self sane when away from a substance they need can cause them to do crazy and even violent things to others. Things like murdering someone because they did not have proper control of themselves is not something unheard of by any means. These people can been seen as both victims and criminals, as they were not in a sound state of mind when doing these actions, however them doing the actions does not mean they should get off scot-free. The users are only one side of the coin, the other is the drug dealers. The dealers do not have to be selling purely illegal drugs, they may be selling prescription drugs too, but in the pursuit of their own survival in a struggling life, they turn to selling substances to others. By doing so they can even amass a fortune, but this is still a crime, and what people will do to try to get all this potential money can span from robbing to murder. The articles I read from different media support the fact there is indeed a tie with crime and drugs, being that an increase of drugs on the street leads to more crime.

In a study that was done back in 1970 by Sutherland and Cressey, they pointed out that in the U.S. alone, “felons are overrepresented in the addict population, [and] crime rates are increased considerably by drug addiction” (1970, p. 164). Despite having proposed several hypotheses attempting to explain the correlation between drug abuse and crime, they could not reach a conclusion. A decade later, the knowledge about the drug/crime relationship had steadily increased due to numerous studies of the incarcerated or addicted population. However, the information didn’t reveal any viewpoints that made sense aside from heroin. This view was

Drug abuse and crime is not a new concept and the statistics around the problem have continued to rise. According to (Office of Justice Programs, 2011), there were an estimated 1,846,400 state and local arrests for drug abuse in the United States. Additionally, 17 percent of state prisoners and 18 percent of federal inmates said they committed their current offense to obtain money for drugs (Office of Justice Programs, 2011). Based on this information, we can conclude that our criminal justice systems are saturated with drug abusers. The United States has the highest imprisonment rate and about 83 percent of arrests are for possession of illegal drugs (Prisons & Drug Offenders, 2011). Based on these figures, I can conclude that we should be more concerned about solving the drug abusers problems and showing them an alternative lifestyle rather than strict penalty of long term incarceration which will inevitably challenge their ability to be fully functioning citizens after release.