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
They feel that they do not have the time to commit to go through a program of rehabilitation. By separating themselves from people that commit crimes and commonly do drugs, they are actually avoiding the opportunity to commit these crimes. This rise in population is largely due to the number of inmates serving time for drug offenses. This program provided technical assistance and training services to start out prison drug treatment programs. New models were formed that allowed treatment that began in prison to continue after prisoners were released into the community. This is due to the fact that if they live with the general population, it is much harder to break away from old habits. They know short-term gratification, the "quick fix” if you will. Addiction treatment is very important to this country’s war on drugs. The programs of the past did work, but before most of the programs were privately funded, and when the funds ran out in seven or eight years, so did the programs. This returns to the general theory of cri!me and the argument that it is the opportunity that creates the problem. By getting inmates to participate in these programs, the prisoners can break their addiction to drugs. The studies done on New York’s Stay’n Out program and Delaware’s Key-Crest program are some of the first large-scale evidence that prison-based therapeutic communities actually produce a significant reduction in recidivism rates and show a consistency over time. New York’s model for rehabilitation is called the Stay’n Out Program. The main question that arises when dealing with this subject is whether or not people change.
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Acceptance Essays
