Are y'all familiar with drug courts. And if so, what's your take on them?
I am on the steering committee for our local drug court and we had our first meeting today. Frankly, this is one of the most promising ideas I've seen born in our judicial system in a long time. The whole premise is to keep petty drug users out of jail. Basically, it gives drug users who are charged an option: They can plead guilty and voluntarily enroll themselves in the drug court program, or they can face the normal punishment that would come with their charges. The program itself is a minimum 50-week program. That means if everything goes perfect and the drug user doesn't make ANY misteps during the course of the program, he/she can graduate from the program in 50 weeks. For most people obviously, it's going to be longer than 50 weeks because most of these people are already addicted and are going to attempt to use drugs again during the course of the program.
Basically, treatment consists of several hours of outpatient counseling each week (in more severe cases, they'll have to check in for inpatient counseling at a half-way house or something similar), visits before the drug court judge and the drug court team weekly, they're drug-tested weekly, and a variety of other things. In the program's latter stages, they will perform community service, serve as mentors to other enrollees in the court, etc.
The whole point, basically, is to rehabilitate, rather than punish, drug addicts and try to make them productive citizens.
Drug courts actually began in Florida at the end of the 1980s, when it became evident that the fight against drugs was failing. But they really haven't caught on until the last three or four years. Now they're beginning to pop up in several different places around the country. Does your area have one? Do you think it's a good idea or a bad idea? Can drug addicts really be helped or is it a lost cause?
Personally, I am not sure that it will work, but I think it's worth a shot. If it saves ONE family from being torn apart, it'll be worth it. In my area of rural East Tennessee, the families torn apart by drugs are too many to count. Methamphetamine is a particularly big problem. In 2004, our number of kids in foster care due to their parents' drug use rose by 6 percent over the total number due to drugs in 2003, and that was just after the meth cases had been counted, and excluding ALL other illegal drugs, which is pretty astounding. I've seen first hand the consequences of this. I'm involved in the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization and the boy I mentor is one of four kids left without parents because their mother and father decided that satisfying a drug addiction was more important than their kids. The stories this kid has to tell about the nine years he spent with drug addict parents are heartbreaking.
I say it's worth a shot.
But what do you think?
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When our local court stays a sentence in lieu of a drug offender going into rehab, the judge imposes a sentence and then holds that opver the person's head if they screw up the rehab. Sort of an extra incentive to complete rehab successfully.
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If it saves ONE family from being torn apart, it'll be worth it.
By the time it reaches this stage, it is already too late for the family not to be torn apart. The drugs have already accomplished that.
I do support a system that can keep the so called "Non Violent" offenders out of jail however and anything that can be done towards rehabilitation is money better spent than money used to simply remove them from society for some short length of time and then return them to the street no better off than before. There is a certain percentage of people that regardless of the cause of their behaviour will not be fit to return to society and any program other than jail will be viewed by them as an opportunity todo as they please. These will keep our jails full and jailers fully employed forever. I am not so sure 50 weeks or 150 weeks is enough to guarantee that there will be no recidivism. I don't have the answers, but I do know that what we do today is and has been ineffective and new means must be tried in order to find a lasting solution. Good luck to you and the committee you are on in finding a better way.
Ben it sounds like a pretty good alternative for non-violent offendors, I have always felt (my liberal side) that there should be 2 seperate penal systems, one for the non-violent first time offendors that is geared towards rehabilitation and another for violent and repeat offendors.
One of the big problems I see with our present penal systems is that non-violent, first time offendors are basically thrown right in with the violent/repeat offendors and basically learn how to become better criminals from the violent/repeat offendors.
The non-violent, first time offendors should be put in an institution geared towards drug rehabilitation (if needed), job training, and if needed education to gain thier GED.
For the violent/repeat offendors they should be put into bare bones penal systems geared towards punishment (my conservative side), no TV, no video games, no AC, no gym, basically here is a cell, here is enough food to live on, a bed to sleep on, and a whole lot of time to think about why you do not want to return here!
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
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Ifferd, the meth problem is almost unbelievable here, like in many parts of the rural south. In 1992, a detective told me that meth would be bigger than marijuana within 10 years. I thought at the time that he was a little off-target, because I had never hardly even heard of meth back then. Now, it's everywhere.
I've heard that too about the average life expectancy of seven years and how it is almost impossible for someone with a meth addiction to beat it. I think because so many people are on meth now that weren't on meth two or three years ago, no one really has an idea of how hard it's going to hit the community in just a few more years. Potentially, this drug could kill hundreds or even thousands of people.
I personally think that ANYONE cooking meth with children present should have a jail sentence imposed. Meth is such a dangerous drug and even inhaling the fumes while it's being cooked can get the drug into the children's system. And parents cooking meth with their children present up here is very, very common, unfortunately.
But meth users are messed up anyway. I did some research on local meth users a while back. It's scary. Supposedly, when someone has meth in their system, any bodily excretion has a very high level of the drug in it. So what a cook will do is, when someone comes to buy some meth, he'll let them have it for half-price if they will piss in a bucket. So they have a community piss bucket setting over in the corner and everyone takes their turn in the bucket. And then that is put right back into the next batch of meth and people put it back into their systems. Another thing that is particularly disgusting to me is they apparently feel like they have bugs crawling under their arms when they're high so they're constantly digging at their skin. Eventually, they form these huge sores. And they've figured out that as those sores scab over, they can rip off the scabs and eat them and get a little high again just from that.
Sick I tell you, these people are sick.
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It's no secret that meth will destroy your life ,
it's scientific fact . If you're stupid enough to take the first hit knowing that then you don't need drug court , you need a good slapping and plenty of time to dry out . That is one drug that doesn't belong in a lesser court , same as crack or heroin .
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Kevin Haendiges
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The whole point, basically, is to rehabilitate, rather than punish, drug addicts and try to make them productive citizens.
I think people should be left alone to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes. Punishing someone for possessing or using a drug makes no sense to. Get the ones who can't behave themselves. Lock them up for what they do to others, not what they do to themselves.
Drug Court?
