Looking at the violence/murder rates in the countries from which the children come, that is Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala primarily, I think that if we could help them deal with their high crime rates and especially murder rates, we could help ourselves deal with our own.
These children are coming from one murderous country to another.
And, yes, we need to get addiction and drug AND ALCOHOL use under ocntrol because a lot of the other crime is associated with drug and alcohol use, especially in this country.
But the punitive system for dealing with addiction that we have been using since at least hte Nixon administration when we began the War on Drugs has not worked very well.
I have seen a drug court in which the judge sentenced "offenders" that is alcoholics and addicts to rehabilitation. That's not all that new. But in this court, the judge called one of his convicted offenders back into the courtroom and praised her profusely for having kept to the program.
There he was sitting up on the judge's perch above the courtroom, looking down on the woman below telling her what a wonderful job she was doing. It was such a refreshing sight -- praise and acknowledgment for something done right -- in a courtroom. Everyone was nearly in tears including me.
We need more drug and alcohol courts where progress in beating addiction is recognized and fewer where addicts are sent to hopeless existences in jails. California is improving in this respect. I hope the rest of the country catches up. The DEA should be for catching big dealers and not for trying to deal with the medical problem of addiction.
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