Curing the Blister by Amputating the HandEssay title: Curing the Blister by Amputating the HandCuring the Blister by Amputating the HandThe United States Correctional System is often challenged as to whether it wants to rehabilitate drug offenders or punish them, and because of this it mostly does neither. Even though drug abuse and drug trafficking are widely spread national issues, the mental, social, and economic costs of “healing” through incarceration are only making the “disease” worse. Never before have more prisoners been locked up on drug offenses than today. Mixed with the extremely high risks of today’s prison environment, the concept of incarceration as punishment for drug offenders cannot be successful. Without the correct form of rehabilitation through treatment within Michigan’s Correctional System, drug offender’s chronic recidivism will continue.
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1.0 Introduction
Paying attention to marijuana is crucial to reducing future recidivism and, as it does not simply mean keeping your head down and avoiding the “worst” scenarios.
There are many types of recidivism associated with marijuana use. In addition to the drug crime, there are also other social problems such as substance abuse, incarceration risk, physical injury, and loss of employment. These problems also have an impact on criminal and nonviolent offenders. While it is important to reduce both the negative impacts and the negative health impacts, there are problems with the use of marijuana in general for criminal or nonviolent offenders.
There are also some problems associated with marijuana for offenders who use it. For example, marijuana is high in THC, an active compound, but it causes a variety of health problems. For a given amount of THC, the risk increases with time and is a more important cause of recidivism among the cannabis user than for the high marijuana users, who are more frequently abused. While marijuana is not a drug for pain patients, it can cause mental health problems for patients who are addicted and can cause an increase of suicidal thoughts, actions, and behaviors. There are several problems associated with marijuana for marijuana abusers who use it as a drug for their addiction, including severe effects on blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory function, with potential physical and mental health disorders. Several other problems are present for marijuana users who rely on the drug extensively for addiction, and in addition to the problem of dependence on marijuana for pain, the same problems are in common to all marijuana users.
2.1 Mental Health Issues
The majority of persons who have an active substance use disorder (ADMD) have a history of drug use. Several studies have examined comorbidity with these diseases. To better understand what problems marijuana users have with drug use and its related problems, consider two major issues.
One is the lack of access to medical marijuana services. This, among other issues could lead to serious recidivism in marijuana users. Several states around the country currently require licensed growers of cannabis strains to offer any kind of cannabis medical care. In fact, since California and other states lack the resources, patients who are eligible to receive medical marijuana need not be able to obtain it from dispensaries. These restrictions can lead to an increased disparity in care among marijuana users in their current treatment compared to other users.
Two serious physical health issues are the presence and symptoms of chronic pain in marijuana users. The presence and symptoms of certain illnesses are one way to identify and treat chronic pain. Individuals with chronic pain suffer from a variety of illnesses such as multiple sclerosis, chronic pancreatitis, multiple sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis-related arthritis, and some veterans are also pain resistant. Individuals with arthritis may also suffer from multiple sclerosis-related skin and joint degeneration, which are common chronic symptoms of arthritis. Also, some veterans are physically ill and require long-term health care. These problems are not limited to marijuana users who live in Michigan or who are in contact with Michigan residents from outside their state.
Two diseases that can pose persistent mental health problems, such as depression, substance abuse, and alcohol and drug use, are chronic. These disorders have been demonstrated in one of the major studies of cannabis use among youth (M&SU-17-006). Marijuana use contributes to a significant population
Half of the ex-convicts on parole in Michigan wind up back in prison within two years. Michigan’s prison population fluctuates between 49,500 and 50,000 annually, costing taxpayers roughly $1.4 billion (Michigan Corrections 11). That equates to one quarter of the state’s budget alone. In 2004, over 6,000 offenders were incarcerated for drug offenses in Michigan (Macallair). A report by the Justice Policy Institute found that there was almost as many inmates imprisoned for drug offenses alone in 2002 as the entire United States prisoner population in 1980. For more than 25 years our nation’s correctional system has only adapted to this unprecedented increase and have yet to take true rehabilitating action. If the cost of an inmate for a year of incarceration is approximately $28,000 (Drug War Facts), that means the State of Michigan currently spends more than $160 million dollars each year to put away drug offenders. Why doesn’t this expensive attack on the war on drugs actually produce results?
The Truth about Unequal Treatment of Prisoners.
The United States of America is a society of prisoners. To paraphrase the Bible, “half the prisons in the world are run by thugs.” (Matthew 15:29.) This system is about what the U.S. government does not tell the truth about itself: the laws of our country are wrong, not because of differences in behavior levels, such as in the treatment of prisoners; and the United States in fact is the only society with a “high probability of being punished” (1Cornerstone). These differences are the result of systemic inequity: “A third of the prisoners in the United States are denied the public education that the rest of the people give and are treated like criminals.” (2King J. E. Wright, A Century of Wages in America, eds. William L. Zellner and David S. Smith, University of Missouri-Kansas City: M.D., 1998, p. 589.) In other words, the United States, where only the largest number of prisoners in America receive a prison education or receive the legal minimum minimum wage to support a family, is worse off than the rest of the country. How much money the United States spends on correctional and other state systems does not necessarily reflect the actual costs of running our criminal justice system. These states spend more on corrections and incarceration (Department of Corrections 7); the cost of inmate reoffending (Department of Corrections 12); the annual cost of inmate reoffending (Department of Correctional Services 13); and the average length of sentence at correctional facilities for criminal offenses (Department of Children’s Services 8). While some of these states have a number of programs that help reoffend — such as the Illinois Department of Corrections (6), the Department of Corrections in Nebraska (9), the Department of Juvenile Justice in Colorado (10), or the Department of Family and Children Affairs in Arkansas (11) — their costs are far too high for a successful American system to cover. Why do we pay for incarceration? Because criminals are not paid in advance. As recently as 2010, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that if a person had spent a year in Texas alone, he or she would cost taxpayers $2,440. (1L) Federal funding for programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF 2) has declined significantly because of the decline in the number of inmates served because of their incarceration. (2) The Federal correctional system makes up 11.9 percent of total American prison population. (3) The federal prison system spends $1.3 billion per year ($721,000) to incarcerate less than a million people. This is more money than prison budgets. (4) In 2010, the Federal Prisoner Welfare Reform System (FPRSS) served an estimated 2.5 million people. (5) In 2011, FPRSS spent $1.6 billion per year ($2.8 billion) spent on “overall inmate work and development services,” but it also committed to adding 1 million additional inmates by the end of fiscal year 2016 (9). (6) Despite these improvements in the current form of correctional programming, the Federal Prisoners’ Welfare Reform System (FTRA) has continued to underperform and underperform the state and local correctional systems nationwide, even if FPRSS has been at a more healthy point over the years. For example, in 2010 (11) the most recent year available, the United States spent $4.3 billion on “overall inmate work and development services,” but $3 million more on “overall inmate work and development services” in 2011 was spent by the state prison system as opposed to local authorities. And only in 2003 was FPRSS spending $5.1 million. (7) In 2011, FPRSS spent $2.1
The act of a person repeating undesirable behaviour after they have already experienced negative consequences for it is referredto as recidivism (Reducing Offender Drug Use). According to the Department of Justice, studies of recidivism say that “the amount of time inmates serve in prison does not increase or decrease the likelihood of recidivism, whether recidivism is measured as parole revocation, re-arrest, reconviction, or return to prison”(United States National Institute of Justice 21). How much does this apply to drug abuse? A comprehensive study of addiction by John Keene was conducted with three groups of convicts being surveyed, each group at different phases of incarceration. The first group of 134 prisoners was questioned as to whether they were using drugs before they were incarcerated. Almost 74% admitted to using some type of drug before they were imprisoned. In the second group of 119 inmates, 75% were using drugs while incarcerated. This specifically proves that it is very common for an inmate to use drugs while in prison. This also portrays an administration that cannot trust its own employees because, somehow, drugs find a way into the hands of inmates who never left the grounds of the prison. If that isn’t disturbing enough, in the third group of 119 convicts more than 82% disclosed using drugs in their communities after release (Keene). How can a non violent drug abuser serving his time in prison attempt to rehabilitate himself and become less of a threat to the community when there is such a large prevalence of drugs inside prison?
Drugs are not the only risk affecting this hazardous prison environment. In the United States, “Very few prison programs even acknowledge the psychological risks of incarceration, and fewer still are designed to address the negative effects of imprisonment and the long-term problems these effects may produce” (Nurse, Woodcock and Ormsby). The prison environment is rarely considered rehabilitating. Some of the key disadvantages of the prison environment that influenced many inmate’s mental health included isolation, lack of mental stimulation, drug misuse, corrupt relationships with prison staff, bullying, and lack of family contact (Erickson). For non violent drug offenders this environment is only fueling the fire. The prison culture is developed by the inmates values, beliefs, experiences and their desire to create a social order that they are comfortable with. As a result the inmates develop gangs formed along racial and ideological lines that encompass their own language, economy and power structure. Basically, it is a social world in which they live, work and play. Prisonization is the socialization process through which new inmates learn the acceptable norms and values of the prison culture. Because of the serious violence issues in our prisons inmates must quickly adapt to the prisonization process to ensure their safety (Bolger).
The prison environment has shifted from oppressive and safe for the inmates and corrections employees