Drug Court Arguments

Drug Courts Drug courts are here to help those in need and establish a better society for this country. The first drug court began in Florida in 1989 because there was a lot of drug cases that were similar to each other, so instead of wasting the judge’s time, the government decided to create drug courts (History). Drug courts was a positive effect to this country, however, many people still do not like this idea of having a drug court. Drug courts has caused many arguments which created two sides, the side who are for drug courts and the side who are against drug courts; there are not many people who feel neutral about this certain situation. Drug courts are helpful and useful, but they can tend to hurt people or society. First and foremost …show more content…
Drug courts take away the rights from an American citizens. In the article, Want to Go to Drug Court? Say Goodbye to Your Rights by Mike Riggs, the author explains that when someone is caught with drugs they are given an option which is either go to jail for at least ten or five years or go to drug court for about a year and graduate the program, but if one cannot follow the programs rules and regulations they will still go to jail and have to suffer. One example of someone who went to jail for not complying with the rules was a woman named: Latisha Floyd who had two options; she was to either go to jail for having a gram of cocaine or sign up for drug court. She decided to sign up for the drug court. Floyd had transportation and money problems. She didn’t own a car nor didn’t have money to support her and her son. So she had to miss some important appointments and drug court payments. One day Floyd missed her probation appointment with her officer since she didn’t have a car, they ended up locking her up in jail for four years (Mike Riggs, 1). In this example one notices that drug courts do not understand the financial struggles someone is going through, so they sent this poor lady to jail because she could not pay for her drug test or make it to her appointment in time. There are many people who go to jail because of the same struggle this lady was going through. In another article Drug Courts: Enter At Your Own Risk, the author Margaret Dooley-Sammuli states that there is not enough evidence that drug courts has saved us money, reduce putting people into jail, or safety. Sammulli also explains that people who have relapse are the ones who suffer the most, because if the drug court catches an individual doing, the drug court will kick those individuals out of the program and send them to jail where they will be struggling and those individual have to suffer their drug addiction problems in jail. These are the