Harm Prevention Policy Analysis

In 1989, the first Drug Court was created in Miami-Dade County after the courts were fed up with the same offenders and the growing drug cases. A group of individuals employed with the justice system decided to look for a better method of trying drug offenses by forming a drug court division. The group of individual’s solution for the repeated offenses and offenders was to combine drug therapy treatment with the legal authority of the courts. As a team, the drug court concept was effective in c correcting the lifestyle and behaviors of drug offenders. With its success, Miami-Dade Drug court sparked an effective trend and sparked the formation of 492 Drug Courts in the United States and continues to influence justice systems.

Over the past two decades, drug treatment courts have gained traction as popular alternatives to the conventional war on drugs and to its one-dimensional focus on incarceration. Specifically, the courts are meant to divert addicts from jails and prisons and into coerced treatment. Under the typical model, a drug offender enters a guilty plea and is enrolled in a long-term outpatient treatment program that is supervised closely by the drug court. If the offender completes treatment, his plea is withdrawn and the underlying charges are dismissed. But, if he fails, he receives an alternative termination sentence.

Most people in the United States each year go the prison and keep there for non-violent crime, such as drug related offenses. This issue has affected many family’s life for many years and caused the prisoners to deprive from many of their rights. Lacking the appropriate policies for keeping drug related offenses in prison has been a public health crisis and created a new addiction, like penchant for locking people up in prison. The author in this article “prison addiction: why mass incarceration policies must change.” discusses about lacking the appropriate policies for incarceration for non-violent drug related offenses.

The government and administrators of prisons and treatment centers are trying to lower the cost of incarceration and treatment centers. Treatment centers are the more expensive option but it last longer and has more permanent effects in low level drug criminals. The family and individual want the easiest option that helps them or their children to treat their addiction. They want to use treatment centers to treat the addiction to prevent them crime again. The effectiveness of prisons and treatment centers vary.

The idea behind these program was to help treat the offenders for their substance abuse disorders while still holding them accountable for the crime that they had committed (Lutze & Wormer, 2013). Many studies have been conducted in order to assess the effectiveness of drug court programs across the country. In a qualitative study done by Gallagher 100 participants of the drug court program were examined. This study found that of the drug court participants, seventy-nine percent were not rearrested in the follow-up period. Twenty-one percent of those participants were rearrested (Gallagher, 2014).

Medication Assisted Treatment, or "MAT" for short, is the use of FDA approved medication for the treatment of opiate/opioid addiction and substance abuse with counseling and behavioral therapies to treat addiction (Cormier, 2014). This treatment can be used concurrently with a 12-step addiction program. Common medications used with this treatment are Methadone, Buprenorphine, Naltrexone, Acamprosate and Disulfiram. Despite research demonstrating MAT’s effectiveness as an evidence-based practice, such treatment remains underutilized (Reardon, 2014). For example, less than one-half of the 2.5 million Americans aged 12 or older who abused or were dependent on opioids in 2013 received MAT with positive effects (Volkow, Frieden, Hyde, & Cha, 2014).

Therefore, the goals of harm reduction include prevention and prevention of the overall level of drug use. It also seeks to reduce the negative consequences of drug abuse rather than eliminating the use of the illicit substances. Further, harm reduction aims to save lives and diminish the likelihood of drug abuse problems for an individual, their family, as well as their community. The process of harm reduction also helps in reducing high-risk situations brought about by drug abuse, such as criminal behavior, and HIV exposure due to sharing of needles and paraphernalia, as well as risk of overdose.

This program will be based on the fundamental principles of harm reduction. Harm reduction is a pragmatic approach to reducing individual and social harms associated with drug use, especially the risk of HIV infection. This approach accepts that certain interventions focused on diminishing the harmfulness of a substance, even if they increase the extent of substance use, may be able to reduce the total adverse consequences on the individual, as well as society (Meulen & Ka Hon Chu, 2015). In regards to high risk behaviour for the transmission of HIV in prison (e.g., needle-sharing), harm reduction approaches acknowledge that there are no known effective solutions for completely eliminating drug-use or drug-related problems in the community

The efficacy of appropriate treatment for addiction disorder and substance abuse may be determine by drug and alcohol counselors, primary healthcare providers, social workers, and others. Therefore, it is necessary for competent and those properly trained to utilize the necessary tools needed for proper assessments, diagnosis, treatment planning and future referrals. Careful selection on these instruments may be influenced by cultural, race, and gender (Van Wormer & Davis, 2018). Furthermore, counselors or other clinicians would also need to consider the reliability and validity these instruments prior to selection.

Drug Addiction Imagine a life where someone is controlled by something that doesn't have a pulse, controlled by a substance that they can see ruining their life but for some reason they can't control the outcome. Substance abuse costs the health care system about $11 billion, with overall costs reaching $193 billion. That $11 Billion dollars could go to treating the addiction rather than treating the outcome, and instead of locking up low level drug offenders, we as a society should help them through their difficult time. And according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), approximately 27 million Americans, or 10.2% of the American population over the age of 12 reported using illicit drugs in 2014. 10% of our society is

The continuous use of narcotics results in addiction, and financial struggles due to the costly upkeep. “Financial problems are one of the major side effects of drug and substance abuse” (Buaggett, 2015). Addicts cannot adequately take an active role in the economic activities, as the use of drugs inhibits the abilities of the users to earn a daily living. Due to the instability of finances, this would result in selling personal belongings to continue funding the substance of choice, and depending on the addicts living situation, this could lead to losing their house or being removed from their current housing. While being under the influence, an addicts voice of reason is jeopardized, resulting in criminal activities which raise the chances of being apprehended by the law enforcers, as well as, heavy fines are imposed.

Policies are put in place for people to follow not only in the government setting but also in much smaller settings. According to Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman (2016) defines policy as a clearly stated or implicit procedure, plan, rule, or stance concerning some issue that serves to guide decision making and behavior (p. 87). In the social work field policies are put into place so that there is guarantee that all clients are treated with the same respect and are offered the resources that are available to them in their community. In this paper I will discuss policies that are in place for children that are being abused and what is in place to help them. Not only are we concerned with if these policies are working but also how are they being paid

The preventive theory is founded on the idea of preventing repetition of crime by disabling the offender through measures such as imprisonment, forfeiture and suspension of licence. Preventive theory was supported by utilitarian law reformers. It has a more humanising effect on the society as this theory doesn’t propagate avenging the crimes but aims to make the society safer by keeping offenders in jails. In their view, it is the certainty of law and its severity which has a real effect on offenders. The development of the institution of prison is essentially an outcome of the preventive theory of crime.

2.1.1 Definition of Public Policy Many theorists define “Policy” and “Public Policy” in several ways, depending on their objectives and on the direction of study and analysis. For example, Dye (2004) described Public Policy as what a government has chosen to practice or not to practice. While, Anderson (1979) states that the public policy is a moving direction and is set up to solve problems. In addition, Laswell and Kaplan (Lasswell & Kaplan, 1970, p. 71) define public policy as “a project or programs of goals, values, and practices.” Easton (1960) defines "Policy" as the authoritative allocation of values for the benefit of the public as a whole.

This leads to the question of whether the justice system is doing an adequate job of dealing with drug addiction. Instead of incarcerating people for drug abuse, an alternative is treating victims by rehab and treatment. This paper will exam why treatment is the superior option for