Drug Abuse and Crime

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Drug Abuse & Crime

When I was brainstorming about my term paper topic I came up with an interesting topic which is Drug Abuse & Crime. I thought it was imperative to learn about how drug abuse affects the crime rates in America. I will be discussing other subjects such as how many criminals are actually under the influence of a drug when committing a crime including illicit and licit drugs. Additionally, I will be discussing what drugs the criminals were under the influence of and the statistics surrounding drug abuse and crime and what programs are available to help with the problem. I think I have selected a broad and informational topic that we must be concerned about.

Although, the concern about drug abuse and crime rates is nothing new 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). From this information we can conclude that our criminal justice systems are overflowing 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). So, after gathering these outstanding figures I can conclude that we should be more concerned about solving the drug abusers problems and showing them an alternative lifestyle. I personally do not think that putting these drug abusers in incarceration solves there problem or helps the United States economic troubles.

Let us consider how many offenders are u...

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