Prisons and Jails
Prisons serve as a principal form of punishment in the United States. In 1997, federal prison facilities held 99,000 inmates, while state prisons held just over one million inmates. Local jails held another 567,000 prisoners. These figures represent a constant and dramatic rise in prison population since the early 1990s, when federal prisons held 56,000 inmates and state prisons held 533,000 inmates. (Lipton, Falkin, & Wexler, 1992). These increases in prison population are largely due to the public outcry against drug-related crimes and the resultant tougher sentencing practices that have been enacted against the committers of these crimes and against repeat offenders (Wexler et al., 1992). State and federal sentencing guidelines impose mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and these sentences are often lengthy. Repeat offenders in some jurisdictions, including New York, can be sentenced to life imprisonment. Most states have chosen to respond to prison crowding by accelerating the construction of new prisons rather than by diverting offenders into community treatment programs and increasing the emphasis on preventative measures.
The costs of incarceration in the United States are high. In 1997, the Federal Bureau of Prisons calculated the average yearly cost to incarcerate an inmate at $23,542. The average yearly cost for a state prisoner was $19,800 and the cost for those housed in local jails was $20,225. In light of these costs, states have begun to establish drug courts that use drug treatment programs rather than incarceration as the preferred remedy. States have also tried boot-camp prisons as a way to reduce the recidivism rates—the rate of repeat criminal activity—of juvenile and adult offenders, yet by 2000 states began to abandon or scale back such approaches because they proved no more effective than traditional forms of incarceration.
Especially since the advent of CRACK use in the mid-1980s, drug-dependent offenders have been responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime as compared to nonusers. In 1995, drug offenders constituted 23 percent of state prison population and 60 percent of the federal population. Many persons arrested were actively engaged in the use of drugs around the time of their arrests. Current urinalysis surveys of persons arrested in twenty-two major U.S. cities indicated that roughly two-thirds of adult arrestees and more than half of juvenile arrestees tested positive for at least one illicit drug. One-third of state prisoners and about 20 percent of federal prisoners said that they committed their offenses while under the influence of drugs. Therefore, it is clear that drug-related behavior takes up a significant part of corrections budgets.
It has become imperative to find ways of keeping offenders from reverting to crime, thereby reducing the amount of money devoted to new jails. Intensive substance-abuse treatment programs have become an important part of the corrections approach in prisons because of accumulating evidence that treatment is capable of reducing recidivism rates (Wexler, 1994). Although drug and alcohol counseling is available in nearly 90 percent of state and federal prisons, only 10 to 20 percent of prison inmates participate in treatment during their incarceration. The failure of inmates to take advantage of treatment options is troubling, especially when state corrections officials have estimated that from 70 to 85 percent of inmates need some type of substance abuse treatment.
The majority of jails also provide some form of drug treatment or counseling. Of local jails that offered drug programs in 1997, 50 percent provided detoxification, 78 percent provided drug education, 68 percent had individual counseling, 85 percent had group counseling and 87 percent provided community referrals.
Crime and Drugs; Prisons and Jails: Drug Treatment In; Shock Incarceration and Boot Camp Prisons; Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime; Treatment in the Federal Prison System)
Bibliography
BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS (1991). Drugs and crime facts, 1991. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
LIPTON, D. S., FALKIN, G. P., & WEXLER, H. K. (1992). Correctional drug abuse treatment in the United States: An overview. Drug abuse treatment in prisons and jails (NIDA Research Monograph 118). Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE (1989). Drug use forecasting update. NIJ Reports, July/August.
WEXLER, H. K. (1994). Progress in prison substance abuse treatment: A 5-year report. Journal of Drug Issues, 24(2), 361-372.
WEXLER, H. K., BLACKMORE, J., & LIPTON, D. S. (1991). Project REFORM: Developing a drug abuse treatment strategy for corrections. Journal of Drug Issues, 21(2), 473-495.
WEXLER H. K., MAGURA, S., BEARDSLEY, M. M., & JO-SEPHER, H. (1994). ARRIVE: An AIDS prevention model for high-risk parolees. International Journal of the Addictions, 29(3), 363-388.
MARKS, Alexandra. (December 27, 1999). States fall out of (tough) love with boot camps. The Christian Science Monitor.
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POL-ICY (1998). Drug Treatment in the Criminal Justice System Fact Sheet. Washington, D.C.
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POL-ICY (2000). National Drug Control Strategy: 2000 Annual Report. Washington, D.C.
TONRY, M. (1997). President Clinton, mandatory minimums, and disaffirmative action. Tikkun. Nov-Dec 1997.
This is the complete article, containing 812 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
