One of the serious health issues befalling each community is drug use disorders. The disorder has a significant burden to the individuals involved, families and the society at large. Drug abuse disorder affects the society through lowering its productivity, posing a security threat and crime and lawlessness. Drug abuse has been treated as a social evil, immorality, character pathology and a guilty behavior that must be followed by a punishment. Surprisingly, drug dependence has been viewed as a felony other than a disorder ignoring the complexity and multifactorial causes of drug abuse. Drug abusers have fallen into the hands of criminal justice, which has led to more harm than good. It is therefore essential for the community to help in correcting the drug-dependent individuals other than punishing them in criminal justice.
To begin with, the criminal justice focuses on the drug abuse itself and not the cause of the behavior. Those that are jailed for drug abuse do not benefit from the jail because the push factors that made them drug-dependent are not addressed. Therefore, they end up relapsing and using the drugs more heavily than they did before imprisonment. According to Chamberlin et al. (2019), those who stop abusing the drugs because of imprisonment resume the use after release leading to deaths related to the drug overdose. Thus, imprisonment provides a short-term solution to substance abuse which breeds more harm. Imprisonment contributes to the most serious effect of drug abuse, death, because of focusing on the problem other than its cause.
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The jail and prison conditions do not favor all. Some of the drug abusers may find the jail environment humiliating. For example, those who are physically challenged and terminally ill or elderly find it hard to adapt to the institutional environment. This group is mostly less violent due to their condition. Besides, age is one of the predictors for criminal behavior avoidance (Psick et al., 2017). The prisons should be left for those who are very violent and pose a serious threat to society. Jailing these groups will do more harm to them because they require special treatment which may not be present in prison. The society is the best institution to correct the disorder, with the offenders' needs being met adequately.
Drug abuse is a complex health problem caused by both biological and environmental conditions. Treating the individuals as criminals and punishing them is acting as if the disorder is self-acquired. According to the World Health Organization (2016), drug abuse disorder is caused by neglect and abuse when young, inadequate support from the family, poor parenting, lack of psychological support from teachers, dysfunction in the household and social isolation in the developed countries. In developing countries, poverty, displacement due to political conflicts, violence and strain due to excessive work are some of the factors that contribute to a drug use disorder. Various factors cause drug abuse; hence a multidisciplinary approach should be employed to correct it.
Use of the Criminal Justice System to correct drug abusers leads to family disruptions hence affecting the innocent. Jailing mothers with young children disrupt mother-child relationship, which is essential for a child’s growth and development. The Child Protective Service Agency takes custody of the child when the mother is imprisoned. Many mothers do not recover their children’s custody after the incarceration they are denied the right to parent their children. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), (2020), mothers abuse drugs due to depression. They use them to suppress this disorder. When the mother is out of custody, the stress of missing their children can be humiliating. The stress will take them back to depression then to their solution, drugs. The society should view this as a disorder other than immoral behavior and offer the needed support to fight the drug abuse from its source.
The stress of coming back to society after incarceration is a stress that can be avoided through societal corrections. Those who are incarcerated due to drug abuse find it hard to re-enter society. The society views drug abusers as outcasts, people who cannot fit into society. Drug abuse indeed affects society negatively, but most of the drug dependents are non-violent. Coming back to society after long term jail is a challenge, especially to the old who recidivate at a low rate compared to the youth (Wyse, 2018). Reestablishing social connections after imprisonment is a significant problem for the old. Bearing in mind that most people turn to drug abuse due to stress, relapsing will be a choice to the old. Again, the old, especially drug abusers, mostly have health problems which require special treatment. When society does not take care of them, they may end up using the drugs and going back to jail repeatedly. This may cost them their life. The society has a role of correcting such disorders.
Most drug abusers have unrecognized mild mental disorders. This group is vulnerable in the jails. For instance, sometimes, they may not take instructions from the prison officers. The officers may berate this for disobedience and end up punishing them for no reason. In jail, they concentrate mainly on rehabilitating rather than medical care. Drug abuse will be controlled for some time while in jail. When they are released, they still have the disorder, which will lead them to drug abuse. The individuals may also turn violent due to exposure to a violent prison institution, making them dangerous to the society. Thus, if the mental disorder is addressed the right way, a long-term solution would be found other than concentrating blindly on the behavior and causing more harm.
In retrospect, drug abuse has been viewed as an ill-behavior which can be controlled through punishment. The fact is that many factors contribute to drug abuse. A multidisciplinary approach should be taken to correct the offenders. Punishment to these individuals only controls the behavior for a short period, but a multidisciplinary approach with the society being at the forefront to fight the behavior the right way will provide a long-term solution without disadvantaging the offenders. The society should view drug abuse as a disorder and help those who are suffering from it to recover without relapsing.
References
Chamberlain, A., Nyamu, S., Aminawung, J., Wang, E., Shavit, S. and Fox, A. (2019). Illicit substance use after release from prison among formerly incarcerated primary care patients: a cross-section study. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 14 (7), https://doi.org/10.1186/s13722-019-0136-6
NIDA. 2020, June 16. Substance Use in Women Drug Facts. Retrieved from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/substance-use-in-women on 2020 , July 4
Psick, Z., Simon, J., Brown, R. and Ahalt, C. (2017). Older and Incarcerated: policy implications of aging prison populations. International journal of prisoner health, 13 (1), 57-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPH-09-2016-0053
UNODC/WHO (2016). International Standards for the Treatment of Drug Use Disorders
Wyse, J. (2018). Older Men's Social Integration After Prison. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 62 (8), 2153-2173. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X16683210
