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Jail Doesn't Help Addicts. Let's Stop Sending Them There. [View all]
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
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!
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