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execute them?
http://www.economist.com/node/18233647
Drug Courts:
Stay out of jail clean
ONE was an intravenous drug user who had slept outdoors on a trampoline. Another was a wife and mother who started drinking at 14 and turned to meth at 49. A third was a college graduate and licensed pilot who left home for months on end. All are felons. Along with five others, at a graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of a Baptist church in north Georgia recently, all received praise and a hug from Judge Jason Deal and handshakes from both prosecution and defence lawyers.
They are among the 358 people who have “graduated” from the drug court in Hall County—one of 28 such courts across the state and roughly 2,500 around the country. Courts differ in whom they accept. Hall County’s participants cannot have more than one felony conviction, while most participants in Fulton County’s (Atlanta) drug court have committed a number. But they operate similarly.
Participants undergo intensive treatment instead of prison. Judges receive special training. Rather than simply resolving a case and sentencing the offender, they preside over teams that include prosecutors and defence lawyers, police, treatment and job-training counsellors and case workers. Participants are drug-tested often, and appear regularly before a judge, who sanctions or rewards them for their behaviour. Rewards include praise and small tokens such as sweets and gift tokens. Sanctions can range from chastisement to a brief stay in jail. They can also be more creative: a judge in Forsyth County’s juvenile court gave a teenager caught in bed with his girlfriend a week’s care of an electronic baby doll that had to be rocked, fed and changed.
All of this may sound paternalistic, but it works. A statewide study in Georgia found the two-year recidivism rate among drug-court participants was 7%, compared with 15% for those on probation alone and 29% for drug-users who served time in state prison. A number of similar studies conducted in drug courts around the country show similar results. Hall County’s recidivism rate is 4.7%, and nearly 98% of its scheme’s participants are employed. Jail keeps addicts off the street, but does little more than that. Drug courts, by contrast, focus on teaching addicts how to stay clean, and how to do things others take for granted: get up every morning, show up to work on time every day, pay their bills. Prison has a punitive as well as a rehabilitative aspect, and some have been cool to drug courts for that reason, seeing them as coddling criminals. But criminals will eventually return to society. Better they return well-adjusted rather than hardened and still addicted.
In any event, such schemes not only help the participant, but save money. In Georgia a drug-court sentence costs over $10,000 less than a prison sentence—no small number in a state that operates the fifth-largest prison system in the country, spending one in every 17 of its budgetary dollars on incarceration and parole. A national study by the Urban Ins ute, a think-tank, found that drug courts produce $2.21 in benefits (reduced crime and costs of incarceration) for every $1 spent; expanding their reach to cover all arrestees would raise the level of benefits to $3.36.
For this reason drug courts are winning plaudits across the political spectrum. Barack Obama mentioned them favourably in a recent interview, citing them as part of a growing range of efforts to treat drugs “as a public health problem”. And when Nathan Deal was inaugurated last month as Georgia’s new governor, he praised them for their efficacy and cost-effectiveness. In fact, he was sworn in by a drug-court judge: his son Jason, from Hall County.
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FYI.
execute them?
Don't incarcerate them in the first place if the only crime is usage.
I hear that the dead have a very low rate of recidivism.
Can't remember the exact number, but in Texas I think the cost to keep an inmate is something like $30k/year. Big waste of money to lock up users.
Did I use the right shade of blue?
It is, unless the user is a criminal to pay for his addiction.
Can't remember the exact number, but in Texas I think the cost to keep an inmate is something like $30k/year. Big waste of money to lock up users.
I'd rather law enforcement $ be spent on locking up violent criminals and thieves, but that's just me.
The only problem I see is that in a society in which many individuals lack much in the way of a family and/or friends, the standard immediate source of support isn't there for many addicts. Yeah, I know, don't get addicted. Of course, we already face this with alcoholism.
Of course, this country full of Christians could step up to the plate and fill the gap for these people with problems and no support and help them straighten their lives out. But I digress.
If that's the case, lock him up for whatever crime funds his drug habit. Just don't lock him up for his drug habit.
Says the illegal drug user.
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...893946,00.html
the PIC $Bs and the Christian Taleban moralists will never allow that in USA. Can't even get marijuana for medical reasons in most states, esp red states.
Naturally ever expanding degrees of freedom occur with ever declining social expectations of caring for the sick, poor, and misfortunate.
Locking up non-violent criminals is bad social policy. Of course, we expect the state to step in and take care of these people rather than private groups (though yes those do exist). The left offers state programs, the right offers state imprisonment. The state state state. We seek to shift the burden elsewhere because it's easier to pay taxes rather than get involved. We want to reduce our social bonds to the barest minimum, our social obligation fulfilled with a tax payment. Families are often destroyed such that the individual can better enjoy their freedom. State charity is cold, careless, brutal, and downright inhumane. Just like we want it to be.
We are in agreement.
It's crazy that this seems to be the only thing that the left, right, and center almost universally agree on in here...
I agree, up to a point. One has to apply common sense to that.
If someone is breaking into houses to feed their habit, and as long as those offenses weren't violent (that would be the "felony" bar in some of these programs) I don't think they should be locked up.
One point made by one of the people running a version of these programs is that even if you don't completely get them off drugs, you get them "functional" so that they don't need to commit crimes to feed their habit and can hold down actual jobs.
That cuts the crime rate in and of itself, even if you aren't 100% successful in getting them off drugs.
I think most of us can find common ground on hating Bush's and Obama's bailout of Wall Street. Obama being an awful president is pretty universal too.
I think where we differ is how to take care of them. It may only take $30k to jail them, but if they are long term welfare recipients, how much more does that cost?
I think addictive drugs that alter perception should be illegal, except for those who can support themselves financially already, or have someone who is a lifetime caretaker for them. Tax payer dollars should not be used to support drug users.
Because in theory it makes sense. In practice, however, I have some serious qualms.
The ' 'em I'm going to do what I want' and the ' 'em they deserve what they get' sentiments so prevalent in our society could lead to a colossal disaster. In a mature society full of stable families and mature adults we could probably move to full-on legalization without an explosion in drug-related externalities. Do we have that? Does anyone honestly believe that we do?
Yes, once upon a time pretty much all this crap was legal in these United States without a problem. Perhaps that was because the family and local community were strong and cohesive. We don't have that now.
The problem is that our public policy seems to center around an incarceration based strategy for dealing with drug addicts, one which is costly in terms of resources and lost liberty.
There are no easy answers to the problem of drug addiction in this society. Legalize it without any serious social safety net in place will be a disaster. For most people you can sleep off a hangover and not turn into an addict. That's not the case with some of this other crap.
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