Crime and Drug Use
Throughout my time as a criminal justice student, I have been interested about the relationship between drugs and crime. I have also been amazed by the statistics having to do with the amount of prisoners returning to a correctional facility after their time served. The link between drug use and crime is not a new one. For more than twenty years, both the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Justice have funded many studies to try to better understand the connection. One such study was done in Baltimore on heroin users. This study found high rates of criminality among users during periods of active drug use, and much lower rates during periods of nonuse (Ball 119-142). A large number of people who abuse drugs come into contact with the criminal justice system when they are sent to jail or to other correctional facilities. The criminal justice system is flooded with substance abusers. The need for expanding drug abuse treatment for this grou!p of people was recognized in the Crime Act of 1994, which for the first time provided substantial resources for federal and state jurisdictions. In this paper, I will argue that using therapeutic communities in prisons will reduce the
Ball, Jacob. “Day to day criminality of heroin addicts” 1988. hances of them continuing on with there past behavior are very high. But with the treatment programs we have today, things might be looking up. The studies done on the various programs, prove that there are cost effective ways available to treat these prisoners. Not only are they cost effective, but they are also proven to reduce recidivism rates significantly. These findings are very consistent throughout all of the research. I believe that we can effectively treat these prisoners while they are incarcerated and they can be released into society and be productive, and non destructive. Nothing else has worked to this point, we owe it to them, and more importantly, we owe it to ourselves. We can feel safe on the streets after dark, and we do not have to spend so much of our money to do it. effective to treat these inmates. A program like Stay’n Out cost about $3,000 to $4,000 more than the standard correctional costs per inmate per year. The main question that arises when dealing with this subject is whether or not people change. According to Longshore, the person does not change, only the opportunity changes. By separating themselves from people that commit crimes and commonly do drugs, they are actually avoiding the opportunity to commit these crimes. They do not put themselves in the situation that would allow their low self-control to take over. Starting relationships with people who exhibit self-control and ending relationships with those who do not is a major factor in the frequency of committing crimes. Addiction treatment is very important to this country’s war on drugs. While abusers are incarcerated it provides us with an excellent opportunity to give them treatment. They will not seek treatment on their own. Without treatment, the c! tes that are approaching release dates can work for pay in the free community, but they must spend their non-working hours in either the institution or a work release facility. The only problem here is that during their stay at this facility, they are reintroduced to groups and behaviors that put them there in the first place. If it is possible, these recovering addicts should stay together and live in a separate environment than the general population. Once the inmate is released into the free community, he or she will remain under the supervision of a parole officer or some other type of supervisory program. Treatment should continue through either outpatient counseling or group therapy. In addition, they should also be encouraged to return to the work release therapeutic community for refresher sessions, attend weekly groups, call their counselors on a regular basis and spend one day a month at the facility. Since the early 1990’s, the Delaware correctional! ng treatment through the 160 programs that were available throughout the country (National Institute on Drug Abuse 1981). Forty-nine of these programs were based on the therapeutic community model, which served around 4,200 prisoners. In 1989, the percentage of prisoners that participated in these programs grew to about eleven percent. Some incomplete surveys state today that over half the states provide some form of treatment to their prisoners and about twenty percent of identified drug-using offenders are using these programs. The public started realizing that drug abuse and crime were on the rise and that something had to be done about it. This led to more federal money being put into treatment programs in prisons. The States were assisted through two Federal Government initiatives, projects REFORM and RECOVERY. REFORM began in 1987, and laid the groundwork for the development of effective prison-based treatment for incarcerated drug abusers. Presentations were! oners a
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2581
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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