According to research from the University of Columbia, there are more than 2.3 million prison inmates in the United States, about 1.5 million are drug addicts ( 65% of all US Inmates meet medical criteria for substance abuse,1).This states the obvious, drug addiction is a huge problem in the U.S. Our government has decided that the best way to handle this problem is by locking them up in a cell. Jail time is supposed to keep the addicts away from drugs but many people agree that it does not. “The prison wall is not a boundary anymore,” says Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Mitchell, 1). Thornton speaks on the fact that, there are roughly 1,000 drug incidents reported annually in California prisons and even more in other states. If jail time is supposed to keep drug addicts away from drugs then why are there so many “drug incidents” in prison. This is because the government focuses more on keeping them isolated from the rest of us. There are two main reasons why this is wrong, first of all, because an addict cannot control their urges, they will be more aggressive through the detox process and will suffer
According to research from the University of Columbia, there are more than 2.3 million prison inmates in the United States, about 1.5 million are drug addicts ( 65% of all US Inmates meet medical criteria for substance abuse,1).This states the obvious, drug addiction is a huge problem in the U.S. Our government has decided that the best way to handle this problem is by locking them up in a cell. Jail time is supposed to keep the addicts away from drugs but many people agree that it does not. “The prison wall is not a boundary anymore,” says Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (Mitchell, 1). Thornton speaks on the fact that, there are roughly 1,000 drug incidents reported annually in California prisons and even more in other states. If jail time is supposed to keep drug addicts away from drugs then why are there so many “drug incidents” in prison. This is because the government focuses more on keeping them isolated from the rest of us. There are two main reasons why this is wrong, first of all, because an addict cannot control their urges, they will be more aggressive through the detox process and will suffer