One of the more serious problems with law enforcement today lies in the way our prison system is structured. With punishment being at the forefront of our concerns, enormous amounts of people are jailed. This in turn puts our country at the top, causing us to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. There are a few solutions that may work when trying to solve this problem, but the one I am going to focus on is rehabilitation.
There are currently 4,575 operating prisons in the United States, more than four times the number of Russia. With this high number of prisons we also have a large number of prisoners. About 1.57 million inmates are behind bars in federal, state and county prisons or jails. Half of these prisoners that are in federal prisons serving a year or longer sentence are there for drug crimes. This is where rehabilitation comes in. Drug rehabilitation has been shown to work. Some facilities have boasted drug treatment rates of 75%-80%. Although this number is high it is promising. The average treatment rate for drug rehabilitation centers lies somewhere around 50%. With so many criminals behind bars for non-violent drug crimes, I believe that putting these people through rehabilitation programs would be much more effective than sentencing them to time in prison.
Currently it costs on average $31,000 a year to incarcerate an individual in the United States. The average rehab program lasts a month and costs $7500. The numbers speak for themselves. Rehab would cost less and focus more on making a person better, not focus on punishment as our system currently does.
My idea for implementing rehabilitation over incarceration would start with the smallest sentences. Every non-violent drug related crime with a sentence that would normally be under a year should be converted to a sentence to rehabilitation. This would allow for the person to better him or herself and hopefully cause less of a risk of relapse of either using the drug or taking part in criminal activity associated with the drug. Other sentences over a year would be shortened with a rehabilitation sentence appended onto the end of their prison time. Again, this would allow for less of a probability of relapse.
Another way to fix this problem is to lessen the charges for drug related crimes period. Too many time we see people being sentenced to ridiculous sentences for small drug related crimes. Most of our legislation regarding punishment for drug related crimes is extremely outdated, and although drug reform is popular today, it is not popular enough; drug reform must begin to take place on a national level.
In the end, the solution is simple, keep more of our citizens out of prison. We need to start focusing on rehabilitation of people who have committed wrong doings, not focus on punishing them so that they can relapse and “hate the system”. With a combination of reforming legislation and our mindsets on viable punishment options this can take place and hopefully solve some of our incarceration issues.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/17/3568232/the-united-states-had-even-more-prisoners-in-2013/
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/15/us_has_more_prisoners_prisons_than_any_other_country/
http://www.wisegeek.com/does-drug-rehab-work.htm#didyouknowout
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-a-nation-of-incarceration/
http://www.rehabs.com/about/frequently-asked-questions-about-addiction-rehabilitation/
Damien, I agree in large part with your solution. The United States has the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world. For a country that takes pride and boasts about being “the greatest nation in the world,” why are so many people being locked up? The answer, as you reiterated, is due to the fact that half of the prisoners locked up in federal prisons are incarcerated due to non-violent drug crimes. I think drug rehabilitation could definitely be a viable alternative to long-term imprisonment. Personally, I don’t think sitting in a prison cell for years on end has much of a positive impact on anyone. If anything, I think that incarceration negatively affects you on a personal level. Prison is a place where anger and hatred for the government and its officials can reach an all-time high. Implementing drug rehabilitation programs would better our society holistically speaking, in my opinion. However, it’s my job to play devil’s advocate here and pose the question, “What if frequent drug users see this lessened sentence as an opportunity to abuse drugs and get off easy?” For instance, this may lead to the increase in drug dealers. Drug dealers may view this as a low-risk, high reward scenario where even if they got caught, the punishment of a year in prison would be seen as well worth it especially if this punishment includes a drug rehabilitation program. In the end, however, I definitely can see this solution being effective if implemented.
Your solution of providing rehabilitation programs as the alternative to actual incarceration for the possession of drugs is the way to go. Law enforcement officials should focus on bettering these persons through drug rehabilitation programs rather than locking them up in cells as punishment. These individuals are much more likely to fall into the same habit after their release from prison if they don’t receive any kind of treatment. American society is built on the prison system, which is demonstrated by our high number of imprisonment. We need to shift our ideology from throwing people into jail for non-violent crimes as the first resort and instead focus on bettering these individuals for contributing to our society. We would have a much lower number of people incarcerated, be able to shut down these expensive prisons, and have more working people in our economy. This is similar to the aim of the Milk Not Jails organization: the money saved in closing these prisons can be used to fuel another part of our economy. Sure, we won’t be known as the nation of many prisons, but is that really a good thing in the first place?