¶ … drug offenders before or after they are incarcerated. It is noted that many drug offenders are willing to try treatment but the options thereof are not always present or sufficient as they are only present about 20% of the time. A doctor interviewed for the report suggests that he does not see "bad people" when it comes to drug addicts. Rather, he asserts that he simply sees people with a disease. It is also noted that roughly half of all of the 2.3 million inmates in the United States have some sort of substance abuse issue, either past or present. On a related note, the drug offenders or users are either in jail for actual drug offenses or they were popped for engaging in behaviors that were being done to feed their habit (e.g. robbery, burglary, etc.). Even so, it has been found that getting people treated reduces recidivism substantially. Beyond that, using the treatment option costs the taxpayer and others less in the long run than just warehousing and cutting them loose to use drugs and offend again (Carmichael, 2010).
The overall ethical dilemma is balancing between the safety of society and the needs of the prisoner....
So often, the latter is disregarded and basically ignored as the primary goal of incarceration is to punish and preclude the people, at least for a time, from offending again. A lot of the time, there are not sufficient efforts to rehabilitate the prisoners and this makes the chances of a vicious cycle almost a certainty. That all being said, drug use is, at least a first, so likening it to other disease like pneumonia and the flu is not accurate. Second, drug-using offenders getting treatment is certainly a good thing and should be on the table if the offender is willing to participate ... but there has to be active participation for that to work. If an offender refuses treatment or keeps relapsing despite their "best efforts" to get off the drugs and stay out of situations that lead to the same, then jail is probably the only option. In general, the proper response to the dilemma would be to offer treatment for anyone that wants it but the punishments for the crimes they commit, whether they're drug-induced/drug-influenced or not, should escalate with each offense. As an example, if someone has 20 DUI's (and the author of this response has…
