Forced Drug Testing is a Violation our Rights

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In 1995, President Bill Clinton directed a universal pre-trail drug testing policy be implemental. Many feel this forced drug testing is an important addition to our criminal Justice System. On the other hand, there are those who feel that our privacy and confidentiality are being violated, that’s to include our Constitutional rights. Pretrial drug testing is based upon assumption, when we discuss assumptions, they can be defined better as well calculated guesses. The first viewpoint is the knowledge of the defendants drug use at the time of arrest. From this point, depending on the results of the drug test it may indicate possible misconduct at pretrial. The second aspect of the policy is that the monitoring which is used during the pretrial can be used with sanctions which will hopefully deter pretrial misconduct (Rhodes, 1996).

In my opinion I feel that this time of authority drug test are not effective. ” It would seem that if this policy were to make way that there would not be such a large rate of recidivism” (U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1999). It takes more that sending a person to prison to break them of their habits. The means which are necessary to aid the cause of ending a drug habit are not available with this policy. Under the Bill of rights, the four rights that this policy violates are, The right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to be treated the same as others.

The reason that this policy is a violation is because all people are presumed innocent until proven otherwise, this also ties into the right against self incrimination. The right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is also a violation. It is in fact a violation of person’s rights to be forced to take a drug test, and have the results revealed to everyone before the case had even been presented to a court.

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