Treatment Programs in the United States

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.

Everett, Cristina. "Drug Treatment Can Succeed as an Alternative." America 's Prisons. Ed. Roman Espejo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from “Treatment, Not Prison, Best Solution for Drug Offenders." Daily Bruin 19 Oct. 2000. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

People who have committed a drug-related crime can often be court-ordered into rehabilitation. This option is often sought by people who wish to avoid serving time in jail or prison and is only possible with non-violent crimes. And while it isn 't exactly ideal, it can still serve as a useful way to get your loved one into rehab.

Drug addiction has increased drastically across America in the last fifty years. Non-violent drug offenders fill our jails and prisons. Taxpayer dollars are put into a prison system that is proving to be counter-productive. Recidivism rates are high. Drug Court is an alternative to incarceration that offers rehabilitation to criminal offenders. In drug court, the traditional functions of the U.S. justice system are profoundly altered. The judge is the leader of a treatment team. The judge makes all final decisions and holds a range of discretion unprecedented in the courtroom, including the type of treatment mandated and how to address

In the past, law enforcement was taught to arrest anyone distributing or using opioids. The state believed that jail was the best method to get addicts off the streets and to stop using drugs. The issue with this method was when these addicts were released from jail, they went right back to using. United States President Barack Obama, has been working on a plan to reform the nation’s criminal justice program. He proposed that drug courts, which are fundamentally substance-abuse boot camps, are the best way to help treat addiction (Redmond A3+). Obama’s plan involved getting rid of mandatory minimum sentences, which he believed would also be a very cost saving solution. Obama stated, “We should invest in alternatives to prison, like drug courts and treatment and probation programs which ultimately can save tax payers thousands of dollars each year” (Redmond A3+). The problem with Obama’s method is that he does not seem to be concerned about the mental health of these

A social reformer, a civil philanthropist, and a judge by the name of James(Jim) Gray, strongly believes that no matter how loose or strict prosecutors are on drug offenders the war on drugs is going to continue until the United States can realize that the only way to solve the drug addiction problem in America is to realize that we must rehabilitate and treat drug offenders and addicts in order to prevent and eliminate drug related violence and crime(Gray, J. P. 2011. pp. 19-20). Judge Gray continues on to state that we must see and treat drug users as human beings, which according to judge Gray most Americans do not do this. Judge Gray stated that the zero tolerance policy that we have here in the United States allows little to no room

Whenever interventions are instituted, the success rate will never be 100 percent. As it pertains to drug courts, the success or lack of success could be due to a number of reasons. A few notable reasons are said to have to do with the way the program is set up, the wrong type of defendants selected, and even that the program is poorly administered. When measuring a drug court’s effectiveness, it’s imperative that all data related to the drug court and its defendants are carefully evaluated. It has been found that some evaluations performed on drug courts fail to produce positive results because they many do not completely fulfill all of the research on the courts and the participants. They fail to follow participants for an acceptable period of time after completing or were disqualified from the program, and comparisons are often biased. As one can see, there are many irregularities and weaknesses in many of the evaluations done on drug courts, leaving inconsistent and questionable findings on whether the program is successful or not (Burke, 2010).

Today in the United States a land that claims to be the freest nation on the face of the Earth more people will wake up inside of a federal/state prison or a county jail cell than in any other country on the planet. As of 2012 this figure was a staggering 2,228,400 (jail 744,500; prison 1,483,900) add in to this the additional sum of just over 5 million people on parole (851,200) and probation (3,942,800) giving us a grand total of over 7 million citizens under some level of Federal or State supervision (Glaze and Herberman). This is up from only 1,840,421 in 1980 a percentage increase of 281.56% (Glaze and Herberman). As of 2012 over half of the inmates in the federal prison system (50.6%) were incarcerated for drug charges (Caron and Golinelli) while according to 2011 statistics just under 17% of state prisoners were locked away for offenses related to illegal substances (Carson and Sabol). The cost of maintaining this level of incarceration is in all honesty a tremendous burden upon both our justice system and our tax base. If you were to go to the website www.drugsense.org you would see their drug war clock which increases by $500 every second based upon the National Drug Control Policy’s 2010 statistics (Drugsense.org). The country needs to make serious changes in order to alleviate this Promethean like burden that has been placed on our tax payers and our infrastructure. Our system desperately needs reform in order to rescue society from these metaphorical

Between 1990 and 1999, individuals who were convicted of a drug crime rose past 100,000, which accounted for 20 percent of our nation’s increased prison population (Lurigio, 2008). Between 1995 and 2003, the number of drug-related offenders constituted the largest increase of criminals in our nation’s prison population (Lurigio, 2008). In 2004, approximately 50 percent of state prisoners were known to be substance abusers or have drug dependency (King & Pasquarella, 2009). During these years, drug offenders were crowding dockets, prisons, and nearly the entire criminal justice system (Lurigio, 2008). Due to the expensive cost of handling such cases and the difficulty of changing the habits of drug abusers, community based programs were introduced to slow the drastic increase of drug-related incarcerations (Lurigio, 2008). According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Americans owed nearly 32 billion dollars toward criminal justice expenses, 31 billion dollars toward lost productivity, and three billion towards property damage in 1998 (King & Pasquarella, 2009). These chain of events built the foundation for Drug Treatment Courts (DTC) here in the United States. The origin of the first-ever drug court was located in the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, Florida in 1989 (King & Pasquarella, 2009). DTC programs maintain

The grounds for the fast-track passing of the new health policy in this bill were the largely noticeable deficiencies in the previous prison health policy. Previously the treatment available in prisons was limited to counseling and a behavioral approach. A strictly psychological tactic like counseling lacked the dimension of a medicine-based approach to substance abuse therapy. One-dimensional psychological programs yield marginal success results, and “unfortunately, these programs do tend to come with long wait lists. In fact, more than 51,000 inmates of federal prisons were on waiting lists for these treatment programs” (Dual Diagnostics). That is a very

Drug courts in the United States need to undergo restructuring. This is because these courts’ jurisdiction over cases involving substance abuse need to be expanded if the problem of prison overcrowding is going to be effectively administered (power point notes). The drug courts aim at channeling nonviolent offenders into a rehabilitation treatment program that would help them abandon the habit instead of sending the same to prisons (power point notes). In prison’s, the drug addict stands no chance to correct their behavior because theirs is an abnormal case. This is not the only challenge encountered in administering of justice and corrective measures. They are several. Dealing with drug addicts is not easy. This is because drug addicts need to be treated as special cases so that the entire process can be successful. Racism is a major deterred to the success of justice execution in all aspects, especially on victims of drug abuse. It is common to see black Americans drug victims being easily convicted than their white counterparts. However, Rebecca tiger presents an impeccable argument that drug addict ought to be treated more than just as a sick person. This effect nullifies the element of biasness as the focus is now directed on the “disease” and no the color skin of the victim. The end effect of implementation of this ideology is that the enlightened coerciveness in dealing with drug addicts is expected to go down,

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

Addiction is a serious problem in the united states. People can get addicted to just about anything, but the worst type of addiction is to drugs and alcohol. According to a study by Healthday “Nearly 10 percent of Americans use an illicit drug.”(Healthday) Not all are addicted but they are on their way to be. The study also said that “23 million people need treatment”(Healthday). With a stat like that, treatment centers are popping up all around to help people get over their addiction. A place like the Betty Ford Center. Mainly deals with celebrities and anyone who can afford it. Johnny Cash sought help from the Betty Ford Center right when it opened up in 1982 and made it popular for celebrities. He attended the Betty Ford Center more than once, and it

Scientific research shows that treatment can help many drug using offenders change their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors; avoid relapse; and successfully remove themselves from a life of substance use and crime. Treatment can cut drug use in half, decrease criminal activity, and reduce arrests. It is true that legal pressure might be needed to get a person into treatment and help them stay there. Once in a treatment program, however, even those who are not initially motivated to change can become engaged in a continuing treatment process. In fact, research suggests that mandated treatment can be just as effective as voluntary admission to rehab centers.

The so-called “War on Drugs,” as declared by the Nixon administration in the signing of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, marked the beginning of the current era of mandatory minimum sentencing, racism, privatized prisons, and a powerful constituency that profits as a result of the prohibition of drugs. Psychoactive substances have been apart of the human experience as long as humans have walked the earth. There is little hope that drug production will ever be curtailed, so long as there is a demand; a demand that has remained steady even though it has been forty years since the beginning of said war. As Judge James P. Gray from the Superior Court of Orange County has so plainly put it: “Where did this policy