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relationshipbetwwen crime rate and substance abuse
prison population thesis
prison population thesis
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Substance abuse is a national problem. Prisons are overcrowded with these types of offenders. People will do anything to get these drugs ranging from petty theft to murder. People with substance abuse problems know no boundaries. All they think about is how they are going to get that drug for that day. Substance abusers do not care who they hurt or why they hurt them. A lot of people that are addicted hurt the people they love the most like children and parents. People in the prison system that has been convicted of violent crimes most of them say that they were under the influence of some type of drug or alcohol. Putting these types of individuals in prison is a problem. They are put in there to get rehabilitated and help with their drug problem. The states and United States government contribute billions of dollars to prisons; where, the majority of offenders are substance abusers. However, are they really getting the help they need? Here is a little history on drug abuse. According to David Musto (1987) drug abuse has been around for approximately 100 years. Christian organizations had a meeting with congress and made a claim that drug abusers were hazardous, wicked individuals. These groups thought that the drug use among foreign individuals like the Chinamen and corrupt Mexicans were a threat for the American born individuals. These groups convinced Congress to criminalize drugs. One-hundred years ago some drugs was legal to possess and even children could buy drugs like morphine, opium, marijuana, and cocaine. These drugs if got caught with them today could result in a life sentence it today’s society. 1914 was a change for these drugs it was like overnight these drugs become illegal. The reason for this change in 1914 wa... ... middle of paper ... ...ment. When they modified the treatment they hinder the ability to identify the effective parts of this treatment. According to De Leon 2000 this treatment model recommends hiring recovering addicts and ex-felons (Cook, J. (2008). This has been challenge for the TC program, because of the policies and procedues in the prison institutions. They trained inmates with good behavior to take place of the ex-felons and recovering addicts. The TC program has four phases with the phases running from orientation where they learn the program rules. The second phase is where they learn how to cope with everyday problems. Third phase is where they learn life skills and violence substitutes. The fourth and final phase is where they get the inmates ready for release through with groups like education and employment. Treatment programs could cause other health problems.
Prisons are already overcrowded and by putting them into the prison, they are going to take up space, space that the prisons don’t have and taking away an opportunity to lock up and actual criminal. If we were to take out all of the nonviolent offenders, we could save so much more money, $95 dollars a day just for one inmate. By not putting them into prison, we are not going to be taking a parent away from their child. Children need their parents, regardless of the choices and mistakes that parents make. Therefore nonviolent drug offenders should not be hiven mandatory jail
The war on drugs in our culture is a continuous action that is swiftly lessening our society. This has been going on for roughly 10-15 years and has yet to slow down in any way. Drugs continue to be a problem for the obvious reason that certain people abuse them in a way that can lead to ultimate harm on such a person. These drugs do not just consist of street drugs (marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy), but prescription medications as well. Although there are some instances where drugs are being used by subjects excessively, there has been medical research to prove that some of these drugs have made a successful impact on certain disorders and diseases.
However, before the specific outcomes of Congressional influence and policy impact can be evaluated it becomes important to first review the general history and current situation of drugs today. Our present drug laws were first enacted at the beginning of the century. At the time, recreational use of narcotics was not a major social issue. The first regulatory legislation was for the purpose of standardizing the manufacturing and purity of pharmaceutical products. Shortly after, the first criminal laws were enacted which addressed opium products and cocaine. Although some states had prohibited the recreational use of marijuana, there was no federal criminal legislation until 1937. By contrast, the use of alcohol and its legality was a major social issue in United States in the early 20th century. This temperance movement culminated in the prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to 1933. Recreational drug use, particularly heroin, became more prevalent among the urban poor during the early ?60s. Because of the high cost of heroin and its uncertain purity, its use was associated with crime and frequent overdoses.
The problem is that the people who are being incarcerated don’t need to be incarcerated. Instead of trying to do what is best for the offenders and help them we are just throwing them in prisons for so many years and hoping it will help. Yes, this idea is working in some cases, but in other cases throwing the person in for many years is actually making it worse. They are not getting the help or treatment they need. I spoke with a man who was in prison for many years and he said getting drugs in prison is so much easier than getting them outside of prison. He also said that most drug offenders go back to prison, because they do not get help with their addictions. They are being put into a place that is just making their addictions worse.
To understand the reason behind the anti-drug movement and the development of stereotypes, one should know the history of the prohibition of certain drugs. One of the first drugs that were prohibited was Opium. This was due to the large amount of Chinese immigrants which consumed opium.
Drug use and abuse is as old as mankind itself. Human beings have always had a desire to eat or drink substances that make them feel relaxed, stimulated, or euphoric. Wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and medicinal use of marijuana has been dated to 2737 B.C. in China. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the active substances in drugs were extracted. There was a time in history when some of these newly discovered substances, such as morphine, laudanum, cocaine, were completely unregulated and prescribed freely by physicians for a wide variety of ailments.
For a drug treatment program to work, the treatment has to be comprehensive and has the ability to conform to every individual situation. Lessons learned in the TC must be internalized in order for their treatment to sufficiently keep the inmate off drugs after their release. The first step for inmates to start their treatment is to understand why they are there, "TCs require participants to assume personal responsibility for their own recovery and to work with others in the community to become sober, law-abiding citizens"(Olson and Lurigio, 2014).
can become a major source of income, not only for the inmate, but also for
In prisons they used three main types of programs to help inmates. Some prisons think having community involvement will help the inmates.They call this program Therapeutic Community Programs (TC). This program and drug-free outpatient community based programs are well implemented programs that are associated with better treatment outcomes (Ethridge & Hubbard, 2000; Pendergast, Podus, & Chang, 2000). TC focuses on program activities related to the community as a change agent, some those agents include but do not limit to informal interaction between inmates, staff and inmates, and working in different jobs at the prison. Another program in prisons is Cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT). This program lets staff look to see if the inmate has inappropriate ways of thinking and behaving, a lack of self-understanding, the failure to think about the consequences of he or she's actions, and the need to substitute new cognitions and behaviors ( Melnick et al., 2004). The largest program and most well known is the 12-step program. The 12-step progr...
Anti-drug legislation has had an extensive and fascinating record in the United States. The initial drug that showed prevalent use in the nation was Opium, which came primarily from China. Opium was utilized as a recommendation drug by doctors, but the growing cases of addiction led to laws alongside this drug. The greater part of the opium addicts were girls due to the doctors tend to recommend the drug for many women’s particular problems. In 1875, a law was approved in California barring individuals from smoking opium. While the law pertained generally to Chinese immigrants it was the first place in anti-drug provision is the Unites States. At the Federal stage, the prohibition of importation of opium by Chinese nationals happened in 1887 and in 1905 opium smoking was constrained in the Philippines (Harrison). While these regulations were the initial steps, they did not have any absolute provisions to decrease drug supply and use in the country. The laws beleaguered the lessening of delivery of drugs in the country and do not deal with the problem of treatment of a true illness.
Indeed, a closer look at the history of drug use shows that, before 1914, most drug users were harmless to society and even carried on normal, productive lives. Troy Duster notes that "some of the most respectable citizens of the community, pillars of middle-class morality, were addicted…. Family histories [indicate] that many went through their daily tasks, their occupations, completely undetected by friends and relatives" (9). Even after drug prohibition, Lawrence Kolb, assistant surgeon general of the United States in 1925 noted that "no opiate ever directly influenced addicts to commit violent crime" (qtd. in Trebach 57).
The services provided by correctional facilities in most are just components, and staff just don’t care many have lost their lives due to non-treatment received. Some of the diseases are expensive and can not be treated, although health care in prisons is bad it is still better than what those incarcerated would receive in their communities (Prison health care, 2007). In 2002 there was a nationwide debate only after a California inmate received a million-dollar heart transplant if it is a matter of life or death, I feel they deserve to be treated to save their life. What most have to remember is life happens and every person incarcerated is not a bad person circumstance, choices, and life happens that can lead individuals to do things they would not ordinally do.
If all of these programs are used successfully, then there will be a successful rehabilitation program. The program described is based around the individual offender’s needs, although it addresses both criminal and non-criminal needs. It focuses particularly on how well the offender responds to issues, by separating the KEY prisoners from others in the facility, allowing closer attention to be paid to the individual’s situation. It seems that the usual situation of an ex-prisoner is that he or she is liable to re-offend. This is most certainly because the programs right now are not good enough. Programs now only seek one of the problems with an offender. Successful rehabilitation exercises and recognizes the whole of the offender’s set of needs/problems. The programs must aim to change those who want to change. Those who are taught to be productive are likely to develop the self-esteem essential to a normal, integrated personality. This kind of program would provide skills and habits and replace the sense of hopelessness that many inmates have. In the end, rehabilitation is about changing individual lives.
People who are in prison strictly because of drug use should be given the chance to get better instead of being incarcerated. However, I believe that those who commit other crimes while under the influence of drugs should still go to prison and get treatment where available.
Drugs are something that has been prevalent in our society for many decades now. It seems that as our population continue to grow, drugs seem to continue to have a major impact throughout our society, then used by drug seem to have been influenced by many things, either through social or cultural factors and it have affected people in many different ways such as their behavior, their attitude and just basically their livelihood. Today our society is deeply infected with the issue of drugs, we look around our society and we see young kids are being consume by drugs, we see workers, and executive people are also being consumed by drugs. Drugs continue to play a huge role in our society because while most people