Jail Doesn't Help Addicts. Let's Stop Sending Them There.

[NYC_SKP]

We need to offer a range of inpatient and outpatient recovery services, not jail time.

Jail Doesn't Help Addicts. Let's Stop Sending Them There.



10/17/2014

By Kara Dansky, Senior Counsel, ACLU Center for Justice at 11:17am

Misti Barrickman has scoliosis. Since she was a teenager, it's been debilitating. It hurt to lie down. It hurt to stand up.

She started taking Oxycontin to help with the pain and became addicted. She came to Seattle to find large quantities of the drug. Unable to find it and feeling increasingly desperate, Misti tried what was readily available: heroin. For the next seven years, she struggled with addiction. She lived between a tent and a jail cell, racking up charges for possession and prostitution.

Her story is all too common.

Almost 30,000 people were arrested for drugs in New York in 2012. Over 117,000 people were arrested for drugs in California in the same year. Nearly 10,700 people were arrested for drugs in Washington that year.

More at the link: https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform-prisoners-rights/jail-doesnt-help-addicts-lets-stop-sending-them-there

Why do we do things like require 12-step programs, then violate the meth addict that refuses to go, then have to pay out $2,000,000 to the meth addict (who might well still be struggling with addiction) and not learn the lesson that jail time doesn't help anyone, and requiring faith-based programs as a part of recovery ain't gonna work for men like him?

I love and support the ACLU. Money well spent!

[msongs]

1. jail helps corporations and the democratic party politicians owned by corporations nt

[Fred Sanders]

2. Faith based addiction treatment mandated by courts is a clear cut civil rights violation and

another example of the ignorance of the religious zealots.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Further, it's ineffective with most participants.

Further suggesting their ignorance, or worse, that that recovery isn't their goal.

If anything, repeat offenders might be good for business.

[Chemisse]

6. There needs to be an alternative to those based on Christian beliefs.

It must be hard to buy into a program when a large chunk of it is against your beliefs.

[NYC_SKP]

7. I worry that it may even make matters worse, telling people they are powerless.

When so much 'real' powerlessness exists in people's lives, what might really help is to teach them how to realize and utilize the power that they have.

Cognitive Behavior Theory, DBT, Rational Recovery, and many other programs exist that teach people how to be stronger, not weaker.

Nice to see you!

[Kalidurga]

4. Our "justice" system has nothing to do with helping people or reform

it's about punishment and profit.

[libodem]

5. Kick

Hell to the yeah!!!

[mopinko]

8. i sincerely hope that a couple of chicago's shuttered schools become a drug treatment

halfway house. in a lot of those neighborhoods, that is something more badly needed than a half empty school.

thanks to the aca, this is something cook county is really, really working.

[NYC_SKP]

9. I'm glad to hear that, mo.

This country is such a hot mess, so many in need on the one hand, so many resources on the other.

I might be wrong, but there are probably record numbers of homeless this year and last and precisely the same time there are record numbers of vacant housing units.

What the fuck, right?

[mopinko]

10. true.

one big circular wtf the world is these days.
or at least mine is.

got some good, smart dems at the county level these days, tho. they are working hard, and working smart.