Over the past two decades, drug treatment courts have gained traction as popular alternatives to the conventional war on drugs and to its one-dimensional focus on incarceration. Specifically, the courts are meant to divert addicts from jails and prisons and into coerced treatment. Under the typical model, a drug offender enters a guilty plea and is enrolled in a long-term outpatient treatment program that is supervised closely by the drug court. If the offender completes treatment, his plea is withdrawn and the underlying charges are dismissed. But, if he fails, he receives an alternative termination sentence. The premise of this
Article is that drug courts provide particularly poor results for the very defendants that they are intended to
In a landmark Supreme Court case involving procedural due process safeguards, the court held that certain requirements must be met when an individual parole is revoked. Based on this case, the court found that due process requirements must be invoked in three stages; the defendant’s deferred sentence, completion of certain terms of probations and whether the defendant successful completes the probation terms or not (Oram & Gleckker, 2006). Since the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed the issue of due process clause under a drug treatment court, a few states have addressed the issue using the landmark Morrissey Supreme Court case to apply whether due process requirements is applicable to proceedings (Oram & Gleckker, 2006). Applying due process
Some people who were convicted for selling drugs were supporting their drugs habits. She suggested they would be better suited in a treatment facility. I concur, as a substance abuse counselor, I encountered many drug dealing addicts. It’s important for them to gain sobriety and develop positive coping skills. They cannot accomplished this by sitting in jail because many jails are ill-equipped for treatment.
Unfortunately the process failed in the case of Dude Freeman and he reoffended and was sent back to the facility to be sentenced for the eighth time. “While dude waited again for the terms of his punishment to be determined, he was thrust into this institutional confusion, and, to some extent at least, it was through the drug game that he imagined his way out. And of course, he was not alone.” (Bergmann, 2008:156) The system does not always work because the judicial system hopes that when the individuals are released back into the general population that they have learned their lesson through their experiences in the juvenile detention facility.
In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander makes the case that the system of Jim Crow never died. It just took a new form in the shape of mass incarceration. Today, African American men are labelled “criminals” and stripped of their freedom, their voting rights, and their access to government programs. Alexander’s thesis is that we are currently living in a new Jim Crow era; the systemic oppression of slavery and segregation never actually went away, Alexander argues, but merely changed form.
“Drug courts are specialized courts that deal only in substance use/abuse cases. As an alternative to traditional courts, drug courts arrange for treatment for drug offenders. Upon successful completion of the program, some courts then dismiss criminal charges against defendants entirely” (Robinson, 2013). When somebody is accused and charges of drug possession, they have drug courts to handle these cases. If a man experiences the general court system, they will have more sentencing time and the fines are bigger.
Why we should incarcerate drug users Currently one of the less heated but still talked about debates is the issue of what we should do with those who have been caught using illegal substances. Some people say that we should be giving them rehab, and some say that they deserve to be in their. Both sides have their points, but the evidence points towards incarceration being a better option. The reason our judicial system incarcerates drug abusers are because enforcement will discourage drug use, it will keep them away from innocent people, and it will punish the addicts so they know not to do it again.
Due to the fact that drug courts are working to reduce crime, the policies and practices of the US government may have to be changed or strengthened in favor of drug courts. For example, in the Journal Do Drug Courts Work? Getting Inside the Drug Court Black Box (Goldkamp, White, Robinson, 2001), the authors say “Nevertheless, these findings also suggest that variation in drug court out comes may be explained by changes in the operation of the drug court and its ability to deliver the treatment and deterrent effects postulated by the collection of components inside the drug court black box”. This clearly shows that in order for drug courts to work and grow in numbers, changes in policies and procedures that are shown to reduce crime need to be implemented everywhere. Weaknesses that can be found in this summary are that all active drug courts in the US did not respond, which could lead to a very different outcome involving the effectiveness of drug courts as a
The first drug court was established in Miami-Dade, Florida in 1989. Drug courts were established because of the “revolving door of drug use” and increasing recidivism rates. Drug courts have the ability to change a person’s life for the better by teaching them how to beat their addictions while providing the proper treatments for each offender. As a result, of the ongoing development of drug courts it is unfair to expect the system to be indefectible. Still, there are many benefits in participating in the drug court system.
The purpose of this literature review is to prove that drug court programs are an effective alternative to incarceration for people struggling with substance abuse issues. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics seventeen percent of prisoners at the state level were incarcerated due to drug related crimes. Eighteen percent of federal cases were related to drugs (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004). According to Lutze and Van Wormer the drug court model was formulated in response to the revolving cycle involved with substance addiction and crime.
Determining this, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has also developed a comprehensive drug abuse treatment strategy for those incarcerated inmates who were affected by illegal drug activities. Drug education programs, and comprehensive drug abuse counseling is offered to nearly all incarcerated inmates. While the number directly related illegal drug activity to inmate incarceration may be approximately fifty-one percent, some form of illegal drug activity may eventually affect nearly all
In the 1970s the United States entered the era known as mass incarceration, the byproduct of the drug war. The War on Drugs changed how society handled drug dependency, diverting the problem from public health to criminal justice. Since the Nixon administration, the political stance on being tough on crime has resulted in various laws and policing practices that heavily criminalized drugs to point in which the prison population in the United States increased from 300,000 people in 1972 to 2.3 million today (Barish, DuVernay, Averick & DuVernay, 2016). The epidemic of mass incarceration corresponds to a variety of public health issues such as mental illness, increased violence within society, increased incidence of addictions, and increased incidence of chronic illnesses (Drucker, 2013).
We have been fighting drug abuse for almost a century. The war on drugs is a growing problem in America everyday. This war is becoming an unfortunate loss. Our courts, hospitals, and prisons are continuously being filled with drug abusers. Violent crime the ravages our neighborhood is a result of the drug trade.
The current system that incarcerates people over and over is unsustainable and does not lower the crime rate nor encourage prisoner reformation. When non-violent, first time offenders are incarcerated alongside violent repeat offenders, their chance of recidivating can be drastically altered by their experience in prison. Alternative sentencing for non-violent drug offenders could alleviate this problem, but many current laws hinder many possible solutions. Recently lawmakers have made attempts to lower the recidivism rates in America, for example the Second Chance Act helps aid prisoners returning into society after incarceration. The act allows states to appropriate money to communities to help provide services such as education, drug treatment programs, mental health programs, job corps services, and others to aid in offenders returning to society after incarceration (Conyers, 2013).
Specialized Courts Specialized courts are commonly known as the problem-solving courts that promote positive reinforcement, support behavior modification, decrease victimization, and reduce recidivism. Examples of specialized courts include drug court and mental health courts. A community might benefit from establishing a specialized court such as a drug court because it follows a comprehensive model that concentrates on reducing criminal actions through treatment and rehabilitation services with the focus being on substance abuse addiction and identifying the cause without jeopardizing public safety and due process (Specialized Courts, 2013).
This leads to the question of whether the justice system is doing an adequate job of dealing with drug addiction. Instead of incarcerating people for drug abuse, an alternative is treating victims by rehab and treatment. This paper will exam why treatment is the superior option for