[See yesterday's blog for the full story on drug abuse and prison reform.]
Almost a decade ago, the citizens of Arizona, employing initiative and referendum, demanded that state courts mandate treatment services for non-violent drug offenders, rather than sending them to prison. The state legislature, in a "tough on crime" political move, overturned citizen will once. Arizonans responded with another grassroots effort and reinstated their treatment versus incarceration plan.
The Arizona statute requires the courts to "sentence" persons convicted of non-violent drug offenses to a mandatory treatment program sanctioned by the state. The law provides that this approach may be taken even up to third time offenders in some cases.
For sure, Arizona has never been accused of being an ultra-liberal state. So, what gives?
The economics of maintaining prison systems explains much of the Arizona reasoning. Courts, shackled by mandatory sentencing requirements, have had no choice in many cases but to fill up the prison cells of state penitentiaries. The costs have skyrocketed in every state. Arizona sought relief for its state budget.
And relief it found.
After using the new system for several years, the results have been telling. Over 70% of those sent to treatment programs have not returned to prison. The majority have gone to work. The savings to the state on an annual basis: $30,000 per person.
Since the Arizona experiment, other states have developed their own programs and many more are on the drawing boards in state after state.
The prison lobby doesn't like the movement that is underway, but communities benefit greatly. Rather than continuing to be a drain on community resources, men and women who return to neighborhoods without a prison record or, worse yet, prison experience find themselves in position to make a positive contribution.
People who have been to treatment for drug abuse stand a much better chance of being employed again. They also need not lie on an employment or rent application.
Lessons learned while facing and dealing with an addiction and an addictive personality prepare a person for a better life. Lessons learned while locked up appear to take most people in an entirely different direction.
Texas needs to take a look at the Arizona model, as well as those now operating in many other states. There is money, lots of money, to be saved.
Even more important, lives don't need to be wasted, nor neighborhoods devastated.
One final idea. Public and non-profit hospital systems, especially in urban areas, continue to take a beating in their Emergency Departments, as more and more uninsured patients receive services for which they cannot pay. Possibly these health care systems could develop in-patient and out-patient services for people who need treatment rather than jail. Sending our tax dollars to hospitals for healing makes more sense than continuing to send them to prisons where the disease only gets worse.
I have observed that many of my neighbors and friends are not necessarily users, but often times just regular street hustlers who sell because its a trap they fell into at an early age. (And then there are those sellers who become users and become even more entrenched in it.) There's no treatment plan for sellers. Hustling is harder to break out of than it looks, I've come to realize as I've watched some try to leave it behind. They know its something they can't do forever--they know that it will inevitably come to an end, most likely in prison or worse. And they have dreams--big ones. To own their own businesses. To be a photographer. To own a home. To go back to school. But when they take steps toward those dreams...they find themselves faced with insurmountable barriers (some erected by their own choices--choices they began making at a young age in culture that doesn't offer too many alternative options). These guys are not the evil, hard bloodthirsty criminals portrayed in the media. They're often just regular guys with good hearts that are trying to make it in the most logical way they know how--and in inner city neighborhoods, its to hustle.
ReplyDeleteThe following is an excerpt from a book called "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio" by Phillipe Burgois:
"Any realistic attempt to address the 'drug problem' has to alter the economic imbalance between the rewards of the legal economy versus those of the underground economy. In the case of narcotics retail sales- the biggest equal opportunity employer for males in the street economy- this requires a two-pronged attack: 1) The economic dynamism of the drug economy must be reduced and 2) the fragility and hostility of the entry level legal market needs to be transformed...
The "American Dream" of upward mobility has to be reinvented by boosting the credibility of the legal economy as an alternative to crime. On a theoretical level, it is clear that no society is propelled by "values" alone. From a practical perspective, it is simply unrealistic, in the highly materialistic context of the larger US culture, to deny the straightforward economic logic of criminal enterprise. Concrete material alternatives have to be available to motivated youths who live in poverty if anything is to change..."
I think the entire scope of issues must be re-examined, whether it is related to those who use and are addicted, or whether it concerns those who sell because that is a more feasible way of making a living. All of it is really just a result of the injustices of poverty and our society's skewed systems that lend themselves more to failure than opportunity for those in inner city neighborhoods.
--Rachel Embry