Drug Addiction Vs Incarceration

Addiction shows a dark path for many. It affects everyone around the addict and often leads to arrest. This presents reasoning as to why addicts need to receive treatment opposed to simply locking them away. Treatment of addiction greatly benefits addicts and proves to aid the individual more than incarceration. The proven benefits show why enacting a solution for the aid of drug offenders needs to occur. Nonviolent drug offenders need to be granted extensive addiction treatment and counseling in the place of incarceration for their crimes.

Drug addiction has led many down a grievous road. It usually causes drug addicts to commit petty crimes and irrevocably ending in arrest. This begins the problem for these drug addicts. Once the courts

have convicted them of a crime, the punishment the court deals out sentences them to incarceration. However, this has been proven to be of little to no help to the drug addict. They often relapse as soon as they return to their pre-incarceration environment and are unprepared for the situations that are thrown at them in the outside world. This is seen in interviews with drug addicts who were incarcerated. They discuss the difficulty of avoiding drugs that caused their incarceration in the first place because of the lack of resources within prison in order to squelch the addiction. This is why rehabilitation and counseling is more effective than prison.

However, some believe prison has good resources for drug addicts.

Prison can help people detox from the drugs they are addicted to and occasionally offer rehabilitation programs within them. Jail to some is even the “catch all de facto treatment program available to me and some of my peers” (Mitchell. I Detoxed From Herion in Jail). This statement presents a point that many use jail as an entrance to treatment. Jail is where many go to detox and remove themselves from any situations involving what their addiction is. Jail, however, does not prepare them for life outside, where they could come into contact with their addictions at any point and time. This is why rehabilitation and counseling is a better resource to these addicts and why when arrested, they should receive treatment as opposed to a harsh punishment such as incarceration. For treatment “it does not need to be voluntary to be effective” (Volkow, 5). This shows that if we give addicts this treatment that it can still be very effective for them once they are placed in rehabilitation. It can help them acquire the skills to live in day to day life and avoid their triggers. It can be individualized to suit their personal needs and prove to be more beneficial to the person than simply incarcerating them and providing them no skills to prepare themselves for the outside world. This is why rehabilitation and counseling is more beneficial as opposed to

incarceration.

In addition, many places offer programs that prevent addicts from being incarcerated.

An example of this is the Harris County STAR Program. This program is said to be a three phase drug treatment program followed by a year long aftercare system. The steps in this program include “...participation in a 12-step program or alternative, engagement in group and individual counseling, regular drug tests, and appearances before a judge at certain intervals. Participants are required to attend school and maintain employment or engage in vocational courses” (Editor, Rethinking Prison for Drug Offenders). This helps provide offenders with the tools to overcome their addiction and the tools to maintain life away from a facility. It can help keep someone on track by implementing drug tests and regular appearances before a judge. It also helps by providing them with a career to keep themselves busy and away from certain triggers they may encounter when done with this program. It also shows a resource that can be quite effective as opposed to incarceration. Another program would be the Travis County SMART Program. This program is for people with a history of substance abuse disorder and who is additionally a nonviolent offender. The parts of this program involve “an intensive four-month treatment program and a continuing care component, a family program designed to restore function to family systems, and intensive counseling with the goal of changing antisocial thinking for those in a

high-risk group” (Editor, Rethinking Prison for Drug Offenders). This is helpful because it provides the skills to lead a healthy thinking and can help lead to a healthy life. It also helps the level of sociability for these people in terms of of how high risk of an addict they are. It also provides an environment to restore family structures that may have been destroyed while the addict was under the influence of a controlled substance. In all, rehab and counseling is helpful in terms of repairing lives and keeping jails clear.

Rehabilitation and counseling are needed to help drug users. To make this possible, it is needed to represent the solution of replacing incarceration with rehabilitation and counseling. This will greatly help the addict and will help prepare them for life outside of a facility. It can be executed through Drug Courts and other various programs similar to the ones previously stated. Addiction can be conquered through the assistance of the court systems.