Drugs/incarceration

There a few strategies we use as a society to get people to act the way we want. One is incentive. If we outlaw the things we don't want people to do, there is incentive to not do them - they stay out of prison.

Things like murder, rape, and robbery, will always be outlawed. That goes beyond incentive, we just have to protect our citizens from their fellow citizens by means of physical separation. Drugs, however are a bit of another story.

When someone is using drugs, who is the victim? Well, obviously those most affected by drug addiction are the users themselves, and their loved ones. But they're not victims of the act of doing drugs, as opposed to a murder victim, who is harmed by the act of murder. They are victims of the desperate behavior (theft, violence, prostitution, etc.) that come from the addiction itself. If you punish the drug possession, you are only treating the symptom and not the disease.

Thankfully, this is one disease that we actually have a cure for! There are millions of Americans who have done it. It's just about locating the resources.  Imagine if we could cure homicide! Wouldn't we do everything we could to cure everyone??

So where do we get the money to build enough adequate programs to make a serious dent in the drug problem? Simple: We already have it, and it’s currently being used to pay for the incarceration of these same people were trying to help.

According to a study done by the Vera institute of justice in 2012, The average cost of an inmate is $31,286. In places like NYC, the average cost is $167,731!  Now, since removal from old lifestyles and triggers is an essential part of achieving recovery, it makes sense for us to build recovery centers in remote places where you can get a lot for $31k. We would be able to incorporate sober living, job placement, and continuation therapy that would give long lasting results to keep people out of incarceration, and into tax-paying society. My guess is that we'd actually come out on top - especially if we ban for-profit prisons (don't worry, I'll get to that later).

So then, do you decriminalize drug use? I'd say no, just for the simple fact that we need a way to locate those with addictions who are inflicting harm on themselves and others. But the penalty wouldn't be jail time, it would simply be court-ordered intensive rehab.

I try to keep beliefs out of a lot of these issues, as the best way to find universal solutions is to just work in terms of results. However, I think most of us can agree that profiting from the incarceration of others is just wrong and shameful. We should be supporting each other as a society, not betting against each other. I don't even have to go into what a conflict of interest this is if the owners of such a prison start funding campaigns and donating to local precincts, etc. Funny how the prison owner's enemies always end up behind bars…

On top of the moral conflicts behind it, it just isn't good business sense. If someone is profiting from this prison, then that means we are not getting good enough prices, and our tax dollars are going into prison owner's pockets. We are just simply better off building the facilities ourselves and paying nothing more than cost of labor and materials.

Of course you can't just outlaw someone's business and leave them with nothing overnight, so one option would be for the government to buy these facilities from the owners at a reasonable price. The government gets better prices on incarceration, and the owners get a chunk of change to invest in something else.

When you put a dent in drug use, you put a dent in poverty and desperation, which puts a dent in crime overall.

What about non-drug related criminals? There are so many people who get trapped in the system because they never knew anything else. When you are raised in the ghetto and your dad is in jail and your mom is hooked on drugs, how do you feed yourself? You don't have the nice clothes, the resume, the education, or the guidance to know how to apply for a job, nor do you have the reliable transportation to and from a job if you were to be hired.  If there are resources available to you, no one has told you about them or shown you how to take advantage. As far as you know, you're in your own.  If you don't turn to dealing drugs, you steal. You're desperate and its all you know. So you get caught and go to jail, you serve your time and you get out on good behavior.  

So now you're out and now you're equally desperate, AND you have a criminal record (not to mention those tattoos on your face that you felt pressured to get in order to survive a prison environment). You try not to be discouraged, so you visit the places on the list that your parole officer gave you of businesses that hire ex-convicts, only to find that most of them were just dead wrong and don't hire anyone with a record, and the others aren't looking to hire anyone at all. You get one job interview, but you're beat out by one of the other twenty people who applied. So now you've spent what little resources you had left on trying to find a job, and you're SOL. What do you do? You steal, of course. And maybe you even get caught on purpose because you know at least in jail you know you can get a hot meal.

These people need rehab just like drug addicts. Obviously not the same kind of rehab, but one of resources and encouragement. We need to have a strong exit program to keep from having to fund someone's entire life behind bars.