are unsupported by the evidence” (137). While no statistics exist to prove that drug courts impact the amount of initial arrests, statistics do prove drug courts decrease the number of rearrests. In Jessica Huseman’s article “Drug Courts Are a Good Alternative for Drug Offenders” she reviews several scenarios in which individual or specific areas of drug courts have lowered to percentage of rearrests. In New York City, six drug courts decreased the number drug rearrests by twenty-nine percent for three years after the initial arrest. In Oregon, a single drug court reduced the amount of drug rearrests for thirteen years after the initial arrest by twenty-four perent.…
This paper examines the effectiveness of drug treatment courts. In the past, there are many ways in which drug treatment courts are scrutinized. For purposes of this paper, the effectiveness of drug treatment courts will be evaluated through rates of recidivism. This paper describes the drug court model and how it differs from traditional courts. It will take a look at the history of drug treatment courts detailing how they became a part of the United States of America’s criminal justice system today.…
The United States Congress has granted the Sentencing Commission to conduct research and collect data collection. There instructions were to “develop means of measuring the degree to which the sentencing, penal, and correctional practices are effective in meeting the purposes of sentencing” (Barkow, 2013). Guidelines are limited because the only govern judges and parole officials but lack the appropriate regulations to govern prosecutorial discretion. Congress have been known to ignore findings provided by the Commission. Their recommendations fell on death’s ears when it came to the Commission proposing to eliminated the disparity between sentences for usage powdered and crack cocaine in in the mid 90’s.…
According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence “at the most intense levels of drug use, drugs and crime are directly and highly correlated and serious drug use can amplify and perpetuate preexisting criminal activity”. Taking this into consideration, it is not hard to understand why so many people are in support of more severe sentences in response to drug related crimes. While the effectiveness of the use of mandatory minimums to reduce drug related crimes is questionable, supporters of mandatory minimums make some compelling arguments that apply to all mandatory minimums not just those set on drug…
In the last few decades, the U.S. population of incarcerated citizens exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for a majority of the increase. The War on Drugs functions more realistically as…
Over half of the prisoners in the federal system are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses because of mandatory minimum sentencing. (NeSmith, 2015). Not only do they have damaging repercussions mentally but they also negatively affect the families of those punished by minimum sentencing. Because judges were unsure and untrained on how to use their discretion there was little to no appellate review on sentencing.…
Although, many do think this policy is great for war on drugs and war on crime, it has been shown in many studies that the levels of crime are not going down. The problem with that, though, is the amount of people in prisons is skyrocketing. "The research conducted by social scientists and legal scholars over the past four decades has provided compelling evidence that the changes in sentencing policies and practices filled our prisons to…
Previous to drug courts, an offender would be sentenced and become incarcerated without the judge knowing what happened to the offender unless they came back through the court system. A judge and the team that provides services to rehabilitate and address underlining issues of the offender’s crime have oversight while maintaining the monitoring offender’s actions. The drug court provides solutions for offenders instead of punishments that don’t change or offer change to behaviors. According to the National Institute of Justice, the success of drug courts relies on the interaction of the judge, proper assessment of treatment and dedicated staff (Do Drug Courts Work? Findings From Drug Court Research, n.d.).…
McCoy (2010) demonstrates that drug courts was established to prevent drug-related crime, help individuals get off using drugs, and help addicts become normal United States citizens. Rempel, Green and Kralstein (2012) argues “[…] their potential to reduce incarceration lies in their impact on recidivism, leading to fewer future cases on which long periods of incarceration might otherwise have been imposed” (Rempel, Green and Kralstein, 2012, p.190). Rempel, Green and Kralstein (2012) demonstrated that the drug court intervention should not be considered for an alternative to incarceration, right away because this based on their findings, more research needs to be conducted to further provide evidence. Sullivan and Hamilton (2007) argues “[…] that although slight increases in substance use prevalence may not precipitate immediate changes in criminal behavior it may induce later increases in crime” (Sullivan and Hamilton, 2007, p.514). Sullivan and Hamilton (2007) demonstrates that there tends to be a gradual decline in criminal behavior leading to a decrease in substance…
Due to the implications of Reagan's War on Drugs laws, drug courts have demonstrated and proven to reduce recidivism for offenders who abuse substances. To deter overcrowding in the prisons, Researcher Messer has found that drug courts can be instrumental in deterring offenders from reoffending. It is surprising that “85% of offenders incarcerated require substance abuse treatment” (Messer, 2016). Drug courts allow offenders to “attain important skills/ideas, improve relationships with family and children, a general educational development certificate, a driver’s license, and/or gainful employment” (Messer, 2016). Researcher Shaffer studied over “80 drug courts and found recidivism rates of 46% for those who participated in drug court programming”…
However, although crime has decreased, drug use has not decreased, and imprisonment rates are growing more drastic. Between 1993 and 1996, serious crime decreased by 5% and adult arrests increased by 12%, but adult arrests for serious crime only increased by 3%; in contrast, arrests for less serious crimes, like drug possession, grew by 14% (Cunniff 9). Yet despite the lack of impact of anti-drug programs, the government continues to take the same approach. Even despite the increase in prison populations, there are little to no regulations of prison populations (Schlanger 199). Clearly, the federal government must discontinue the emphasis on drug sentences and begin to put more effort into decreasing prison populations.…
To say that this is just a problem is a half sited understatement, but to realize the controversy that mass incarceration has caused around the globe is overwhelming. Mass incarceration can be defined as a large percentage of individuals who are imprisoned. Mass incarceration has taken its cynical toll on the U.S ever since the late 1970s, however having more negative effects on the community than good the incarceration rate has quadrupled since then, making the U.S have the highest incarceration rate in the world. With no programs to help prepare and assist former convicts transition back into the social system, these individuals are two out of three times more likely to be re-incarcerated. In this essay, I will use TRACE analysis to analyze…
The United States Criminal Justice System has many problems, but one of the most prominent problems deals with the issues surrounding mass incarceration. Mass incarceration in itself deals with a multitude of problems. The main problem that I am going to focus on is the incarceration of low level offenders. In the United States 1 in 5 incarcerated individuals are locked up for a drug offense (Wagner 2017).…
The type of offender that would be affected by my change in criminal justice policy would be nonviolent drug offenders. It's important to note that the nonviolent drug offenders would only be drug users, not dealers. The proposed policy decriminalizes drug use and instead would impose fines and a probationary period for violators. By decriminalizing drug use, real change may occur. Instead of throwing addicts in jail, there will be a greater emphasis on rehabilitation.…
Drug court participants who had more status hearings and received more praise from the judge later reported committing fewer crimes and using drugs less often than those with less contact and praise (Anonymous). This is in line with low self-esteem being one of the reasons that people do drugs in the first place (Reasoner, N.D.) In the maddening frenzy of drugs being on every corner, in every closet, in every automobile, and everywhere one seems to turn, we need not forget that, although a drug user has a stigma attached, every individual has a story. Everyone is worth saving, but not everyone will be. They don’t need to be treated like cattle without a face or name. They are human and were probably very different before drugs, which mean they respond to kindness.…