Rehabilitation versus incarceration as sentencing approaches

Rehabilitation Rather Than Incarceration

The last thing a drug-dependent arrestee needs is to be thrown in prison with no attention given to his addiction. But many thousands of individuals who are addicted, and subsequently arrested, are tossed into prisons and jails as punishment for their crimes, rather than given the healthcare attention they truly need. On the other hand there are many programs in the United States that recognize how important it is -- in terms of truly helping the individual and reducing the rates of recidivism -- to treat the addiction, rather than just punish the person. This paper points out the benefits to society, the system of justice, and the arrested person, of providing treatment for the drug addiction as an alternative to just locking the person up with a vague hope that his incarceration will rehabilitate him.

Literature on Rehabilitation Rather than Strictly Incarceration

An article in the Journal of Drug Issues (Banks, et al., 2003, p. 386) points out that recent hard-core "get tough" measures -- like mandatory sentencing for possession for certain amounts of crack cocaine no matter that there was no previous arrest record -- have not been effective at slowing the rate of drug-related arrests. Banks calls the policy of arresting drug offenders and tossing them in prison for long periods of time "just desserts-based punishment"; and did that strategy -- get tough because the public is weary of drug pushers on America's streets -- reduce the number of arrested persons in drug-related cases? No. What it did do, Banks continues, is lead to a "court system clogged with drug-involved offenders" along with a "skyrocketing prison population" (p. 386).

So, some key people in the system of justice decided that, as Banks puts it, "If stiffer penalties alone cannot reduce drug crimes, perhaps coupling them with drug treatment will" (p. 386). Hence, the "drug court" came into being, featuring a combination of deterrence-based penalties along with rehabilitation. This strategy combines supervision and treatment, and the treatment not only focuses on addition, but, as Banks explains, it promotes "prosocial behavior and successful reentry into the community" (p. 386). The offender is still held accountable and must be responsive to both treatment and to the supervision provided.

Keeping in line with the program rules offers the offender an incentive to stay in treatment; the "deferred" prosecution and "deferred sentencing" will only be offered if the individual complies with all the requirements. But for the smart person who can see that he or she is in need of rehabilitation, it is the opportunity of a lifetime to get off of drugs and avoid the misery of being locked up in prison as well.

In most states that have implemented drug courts, the probation officers that provide supervision to the offender have gone into what is called "Intensive Supervision Programs" (ISPs). Those programs require the officer to stay in close touch with the offender, monitor the movements of the offender, help that person find work, oversee urinalysis testing and generally keep close tabs on the person. Banks (p. 387) notes however that ISP programs (increased contact between the probation officer and the offender) while seeming to be a good idea, "did not have an impact on recidivism rates." That having been said, ISP programs are still being used as a "viable alternative to prison," Banks explains.

What are the factors that do link drug court strategies with success in terms of keeping people off drugs and out of prison? Banks explains that "positive treatment results" did not depend on "how a person entered treatment" but rather on "how long" they stayed in that treatment program (p. 387). For example, the studies that Banks references indicate that a person must have spent at least three months in treatment to successfully kick the addiction. The bad news is that "many clients dropped out of treatment" prior to reaching the three-month minimum threshold (p. 387).

While the drug court research thus far shows is that indeed, this strategy is "at lease as effective as more traditional options" albeit some studies have found "no difference between the drug court and control samples," Banks writes on page 388. Clearly, many studies have been done on the effectiveness (or lack of it) of the drug court tactical approach, but the author asserts that very few evaluations of drug courts have studied the effectiveness of the "individual components against one another" (p. 388). What most studies have done is look at the "overall effect of the drug court, or the cumulative effect of all drug court components" (p. 388). In those previously mentioned studies (of the overall effect) Banks reports that "most" of those studies found that drug court participants had "significantly lower re-arrest rates than comparison samples (p. 388).

To make her point that more research is needed in this regard, Banks cites a General Accounting Office (GAO) survey that found "important data" missing in the body of literature that reviews drug court success and failure rates. For example, information on the participants after they have left the drug court program is sketchy; an evaluation of a drug court program in its "start-up" phase had not been conducted at the time of this article being published; and also many studies' follow-up period "mostly or wholly overlaps with the treatment program and so [they] provide no information on long-term effects…" (pp. 388-89).

One interesting study referenced by Bank compared offenders who were "randomly assigned to either the drug court or to one of three samples" of systems (that used different levels of drug testing with supervision). The results showed that participants that worked with drug court systems "were more involved in treatment and counseling" during a follow-up after one year of being finished with the program. However, those same individuals were less involved with "other constructive activities" like searching for jobs, doing "mandatory" community service, getting education training or paying fines on time (Banks, p. 389). Earlier in this paper one of the goals of the drug court process was to involve offenders in societal activities, jobs and education, and more things that relate to normal community activities.

Loreen Wolfer offers some updated information in the journal Contemporary Drug Problems (Wolfer, 2006, p. 303). Wolfer explains that the drug court movement got its start in 1989 in Dade County, Florida, with the first court that specifically handled drug cases. By 2001, Wolfer claims there were 600 drug courts in operation around the United States. Those drug courts are quite different from traditional courts in that their format is more "informal," according to Wolfer. In fact the judges, the treatment team, the accused and the defense attorney and prosecutors "engage in dialogue and actively cooperate in the rehabilitation of the entire person" (p. 304). In fact there is a "high degree of collaboration" between justice system and social service agencies and moreover, there is a "nonadversarial relationship between the prosecution and defense," Wolfer reports on page 304.

The point with drug courts besides what has already been explained is addictions do not "occur in a vacuum" and hence they won't be solved in a vacuum either, Wolfer explains on page 304. Becoming addicted is a person's response to "environmental and social experiences" and recovering from that addiction will required social and environment readjustments, Wolfer continues. This kind of holistic (rather than strictly punitive) approach is generally accepted across the board of public opinion, the author insists.

Meanwhile, research that Wolfer presents (three years after Banks' research) shows that in a 2-year follow-up in San Mateo Country Drug Court (California) the rate of recidivism was only 19% for those who went through the drug court procedures, as compared with 53% recidivism for those who did not graduate from the drug court experience (p. 305).