Hello All,
I've ended up doing a lot of jail visits and of late have sat in on a few sentencing hearings. At least in our area, the majority of those arrested for drug possession (outside of the military) cut a deal with the DA for probation and Rehab. I sat in on a sentencing the other day where a repeat offender with prior convictions for prostitution, Heroin and Coke use who had been picked up for fighting over money for drugs with a guy in a wheelchair, plead guilty and was sentenced to 6 months probation and mandatory attendance at a local AA style rehab clinic. This practice is not unusual at all. Judges are bending over backwards not to add "non-violent" offenders to the already burgeoning prison population and are flailing around for any alternatives to doing so.
A few things to consider:
1) Hardly anyone "kicks" a serious drug addiction in prison. Drugs are plentiful behind bars and you are literally surrounded by people eager to deal to you. Added to that you generally have nothing better to do, and no compelling reason not to.
2) Most public rehab programs use some variation of the AA methodology which depends on the addict praying and depending upon a "higher power." Therefore, almost all of the mandated "secular" rehab programs have a religious or spiritual dimension. So folks, the courts have been mandating religious involvement for addicts for years.
Along those lines, studies have found that for those who have hit rock bottom in their addictions, a purely psychological approach is generally useless. "Look at what you are doing to yourself" doesn't resonate at that point, and a worldview of "Well after all you are just a more highly developed version of pondscum in the brief interstasis between nothingness and death" doesn't exactly provide much incentive for not frying one's brain.
3) The most effective drug rehab programs with the lowest recidivism rates also tend to be the most self-consciously evangelical. They emphasize the necessary lifestyle, worldview and above all heart changes without which addicts return to their prior lives very quickly. Of all the drug programs I have had contact with, the most effective is a self-consciously Christian program called "Teen Challenge" and the least effective is a state detox program. Well actually, the least effective is just putting them in jail. I've never seen that even dry them out.
- SEAGOON
