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Why Prisons Continue to Fail

By Michael Blankenship

In 1998, CASA released its landmark report, Behind Bars: Substance Abuse and America's Prison Population, revealing that four out of five of America?s 1.7 million prison and jail inmates were substance involved in 1996. This report provides an update of that work, finding that despite growing evidence of effective strategies to reduce the prevalence and costs of substance-involved offenders, the burden of substance misuse and addiction to our nation?s criminal justice system actually has increased. Today 2.3 million adults are behind bars in America; 1.9 million are substance involved and almost two-thirds (64.5 percent) meet medical criteria for an alcohol or other drug use disorder. Governments? continued failure to prevent and treat addiction actually increases crime and results in a staggering misuse of government funds; in 2005, federal, state and local governments spent $74 billion in court, probation, parole and incarceration costs of adult and juvenile substance-involved offenders...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Justice Gambit on March 02, 2010 (boomark / email).