Jail Isn't the Place to Treat Drug Addiction

Martins K. Badu
Eng 112
9/11/2017

Jail Isn't the Place to Treat Drug Addiction

        Drug addiction is a very big problem in America, especially in the big cities, which New York is no exception. On June 28, 2017, the New York Times published an article about handling of drug addicts for treatment. The article examines and rebukes the use of Jails as a treatment option for drug addicts. Improvements of treatments in Jails is paramount, but when we focus on building treatment infrastructure inside the criminal Justice system, then we are further institutionalizing its placement in there.

        People battling addiction should not be punished but rather be helped. Understanding addiction as a health issue is a key element in helping addicts and maintaining treatment. When people come in contact with the Criminal Justice system, it affects them beyond just their time behind bars. Criminal conviction and incarceration should not be a requirement to treatment. Addicts should be diverted from incarceration and into treatment programs instead. We should not mistake a short term solution for an indispensable one. Prisons and Jails normally have a bad record of providing good health services. They are built to punish and isolate, but not rehabilitate. As Kang-Brown wrote in the article, "The use of Jails as a program for drug users is a symptom of another urgent problem: mass incarceration, which increasingly takes the form of an overcrowded rural or small community Jail". This means that, the not so enough spaces in Jails should be used to reform serious criminals, but not drug addicts. This in turn, will solve the problem of overcrowding in Jails.

        In conclusion, my point of view on this issue is as exact as outlined by the article. All the money that's being pumped into the Criminal Justice system because of addiction, could be used to build modern and effective community addiction treatment centers. Sending someone to Jail because of drug addiction never them. The government should downsize Jails and invest in community based addiction treatment centers to prevent the Criminal Justice system from becoming a de facto public health strategy.This article is persuasive because it talks about the actual fact of a problem that needs to be addressed.

Work Cited

Kang-Brown, Jacob "Jail Isn't the Place to Treat Drug Addiction". www.nytimes.com, 28 Jun. 2017. web. 11 Sep. 2017.