The United States- a country that in the past few years has ranked top 10th in Global Market competiveness, Personal Individual Wealth, and Retirement Security according to Ranking America (Sec. #11,#33,#44), also carries a stain on its resume. Growing up in the States we practiced a ritual every morning in school, all the students stood up, faced old Glory, placed our right hand over our hearts and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge ends with the phrase “with liberty and justice for all”, and we as Americans love to show the rest of the world how free our country is every chance we get. One contradiction to the above pledge “liberty and justice for all” is our incarceration ranking. The Unites States ranks 1st, with about 2.2 million
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President Nixon declared a “war on drugs”, and increased the size of federal drug control agencies. To help combat the use of drugs, mandatory sentencing was implemented, which granted for a first time offense a minimum sentence of 5 years in a federal prison. By the Reagan presidency, the number of non-violent drug offenders imprisoned skyrocketed from 50,000 to over 400,000 by 1997 (“A Brief History of the Drug war”). As a result of the incarcerations many families have been left broken. Fathers have been separated from their children, and sons and daughters have been taken away and placed in prisons instead of …show more content…
First there needs to be consistency in their rules, a person may be eligible in one county but not in the next one over. A benefit of Drug Courts is that they offer oversight on the progress. The problem is that it’s done by a judge, which equals punishment rather than rehabilitation. To counter this, I propose for a single official appointed by the Drug Court to oversee a small group, this way a connection is made and mutual encouragement is formed. The National Institute of Justice reports that there are roughly 1,538 Drug Courts in the United States (“Drug Courts”). This program is out of reach to millions of Americans and should be expanding at a higher rate in order to make it accessible to
President Nixon declared a “war on drugs”, and increased the size of federal drug control agencies. To help combat the use of drugs, mandatory sentencing was implemented, which granted for a first time offense a minimum sentence of 5 years in a federal prison. By the Reagan presidency, the number of non-violent drug offenders imprisoned skyrocketed from 50,000 to over 400,000 by 1997 (“A Brief History of the Drug war”). As a result of the incarcerations many families have been left broken. Fathers have been separated from their children, and sons and daughters have been taken away and placed in prisons instead of …show more content…
First there needs to be consistency in their rules, a person may be eligible in one county but not in the next one over. A benefit of Drug Courts is that they offer oversight on the progress. The problem is that it’s done by a judge, which equals punishment rather than rehabilitation. To counter this, I propose for a single official appointed by the Drug Court to oversee a small group, this way a connection is made and mutual encouragement is formed. The National Institute of Justice reports that there are roughly 1,538 Drug Courts in the United States (“Drug Courts”). This program is out of reach to millions of Americans and should be expanding at a higher rate in order to make it accessible to