The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment - Research Paper Example

The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Table of Contents 3 Introduction 3 The History of the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Program 4 Background of Substance Abuse and Drug Offenses that Defined the Formation of SAFP 6 Community Supervision 8 Addressing Recidivism and Revocation among Drug Offenders 9 Conclusion 13 References 14 Abstract The SAFP program offers 4,500 treatment beds mostly for offenders whose crimes are linked to substance abuse. This is so far the biggest and cost effective correctional substance abuse program that is sponsored the Texas state government. Despite the numerous benefits that the program presents to the prison system, it has been plagued by numerous challenges that have made it hard for it to offer the expected results. This ineffectiveness has mostly been brought by challenges that the program has been forced to undergo. When closely examined, the genesis of all these challenges has been the lack of enough resources to support the program, and this has compounded the same problems that the program was supposed to address. Introduction The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment (SAFP) program is an intensive and an inexpensive substance abuse program that the Texas State offers for offenders undergoing probation. Under this program, the offenders spend 6-12 months in a correctional facility that is run by officers from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). After leaving the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment facility, clients are placed within a residential establishment that is situated within the community, followed by a minimum of three and a maximum of nine months of outpatient counseling. The treatment offered by the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program is usually offered on contractual by private treatment bodies contracted by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In the years that the program has been in operation, there has been ongoing criticism regarding the program especially on the lack of regulation by the state government (Singh & Chalfi, 2008). At the present, the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program offers nearly 4,500 treatment beds that are strictly dedicated to individuals who have been charged for crimes related to substance abuse. Ideally, a person can only be placed under an SAFP program if a judge establishes that drug or alcohol abuse was responsible for the offense and that the offender is ideal for treatment. Under this program, an approximate 500 SAFP beds are preserved for parolees. In most cases, offenders are placed under the SAFP program either as an original condition or as an alternative of a supervision requirement while under management (Singh & Chalfi, 2008). The History of the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Program Over the last three decades, Texas has come up with legislations and policies that are mean to bolster public safety. This has in turn led to overcrowding in prisons and jails and a corrections budget that has consumed a large part of the state budget. Legislations that are centered on incarcerating individuals have been established in legitimate concern. The challenge with this trend is that a large section of those arrested have only been low-level drug users. Since the turn of the 20th century, the arrests for drug possession in Texas have risen sharply. In the real sense, nearly all the drug arrests in Texas are not for delivery or distribution but for being found with controlled substance. This number is inclusive of inclusive of individuals found with illegal substances as well as the ever rising number of Texans who are hooked to prescription drugs. Researchers have repeatedly appointed out that the problem with these two groups is grounded on addiction and for that reason; the right response would be to treat them and not incarceration. It was this belief that led to the establishment of the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program (Roberts & Green, 2002). The other realization that led to the establishment of the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program was that majority of the people committed to jail for low-level drug offenses also had other challenges, inclusive of mental sickness, homelessness, unemployment and poverty. Convicting and jailing Texans whose addictions lead them to using illegal drugs or abusing prescription medication only compounds the collateral consequences that are associated with prosecution and imprisonment. This act further constricts their housing alternatives job placement opportunities and access to learning and health programs. This also minimizes their chances of becoming healthy and participative members of their communities. This realization was a key driver that led to the formation of Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program (Kopel, 2011). The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program is also meant to address the high costs that are related with incarceration. As noted earlier, the treatment option is only a small percentage of the total cost of imprisoning a person in Texas. The creation of this department has also served to lessen the burden of staffing especially given that most prisons and jails in Texas do not have adequate staff and resources to adequately deal with the rising problem of drug use. In the absence of the SAFP program, individuals that were left untreated have a higher likelihood of committing other crimes after leaving prison. Such individuals also have a higher likelihood of threatening the peace of the state and creating a progressive drain on the national treasury. The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program has been used as an effective way of dealing with these challenges (Kopel, 2011). According to experts, for individuals with addiction, drug treatment is an efficient measure of treating the person, lowering recidivism and bringing down the related cost to the state. Although not as effective as anticipated, SAFP is an ideal that has been used by Texas to aggressively and proactively address the challenge of drug addiction and by so doing lower the related crime by addressing the medical and health reactions to this issue. In reality, policy makers have used the SAFP program as a means of support to the efforts by practitioners who have been struggling to deal with substance abuse challenges. This has been achieved by enhancing and providing readily available community-centered therapy and treatment distraction substitutes (Kopel, 2011). Background of Substance Abuse and Drug Offenses that Defined the Formation of SAFP In trying to address the critical issues posed by drug abuse, Texas has over the years been vigilant to avoid uneconomical expenditures on the trial, imprisonment, and re-imprisonment of low level non-violent drug users. Researchers have repeatedly warned that over-criminalizing drug crimes is both a costly and unproductive way of dealing with the root causes of substance abuse. With this in mind, the Texas government came up with measures that were meant to address the problem of drug usage as well as that of overstretched budgets in dealing with offenders. Ideally, SAFP was meant to reduce overcrowding in jails where men and women who had been held up for drug related problems often went back into the same prisons for the same mistakes that they had been incarcerated for before. This realization led stakeholders to come up with a program that would both keep prison budgets down as well as offer treatment to drug abusers (Fabelo, 2012). Despite the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program promising to offer solutions to the prison system in Texas; it is evident that it has not achieved the ideals that it set out to achieve. According to experts, Texas is expected to exceed its current jail capacity by 2015 if the current trends continue. While the sharp rise in imprisonments that were witnessed before the program was launched is beginning to stabilize, the upward rise has not extensively fallen, and the populace levels at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDJC) have steadily been rising to levels that are near capacity. This shows that despite the establishment of the program, the courts are still relying on imprisonment as a means of treating substance abuse. This means that incarceration is also being used as a means of treating the co-occurring mental health problems and hence the problems that are currently being witnessed in the prison system (Fabelo, 2012). In the recent past, there has been sufficient literature to show that the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program has not been efficient as many people have been led to believe (Austin, 2010). When the program was launched, there was a flurry of literature that sought to prove that the upward rise in the Texas prison population had been contained. This slowing of the upward spike was seen as having come from the efforts of innovation diversion policies that had been formulated by bipartisan management in the Texas Legislature. Although the number of individuals that have been imprisoned rose by over 300% from 1985 to 2011, the rate of increase seems to have slowed significantly in the last two years. This slowdown has been attributed to the enactment of programs such as the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program. However, the functioning of this system has been affected by budgetary allocations that have made it impossible for this facility to take care of the individuals taken to them by the courts. This has seen individuals who have been taken in by the program being released back into the community before completing their mandatory treatment period a situation that has made the recovery of such individuals impossible. Ideally, if drug-abusers are allowed to go back into the society before they have recovered fully, they end up committing crimes that are similar to the ones they had committed before going to prison just to maintain their addictions. This has been a common problem that has affected service delivery by the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program (Berkowitz, Brindis, Clayson, & Peterson, 2011). While the SAFP has been used as a means of reducing drug abuse in the society, there is enough evidence to prove that this has not been so. This can be seen from the constant rise of drug-related crimes in the past ten years, which have gone up by more than 30% within that period. Ideally, nearly 90% of all drug related arrests in Texas are due to possession and not necessarily delivery or distribution. In 2010 alone, over one hundred thousand individuals were arrested for being in possession of illegal drugs. This marked over 10% of all the arrests for other crimes put together, and in 2005, the figure of such crimes was only 25,000 individuals. According to experts, it is interesting that a large section of individuals who were arrested for such drug related crimes had gone through the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program. This means that the program has failed to live up to the ideals for which it was formed (Donohue, & Siegelman, 2010). Another indication that the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program has failed in its objectives can be seen from the fact that the budgetary allocations for TDCJ has increased significantly within the same period. According to experts, the TDCJ budget went up by $700 million in the period starting from 2005 to 2011 ($2.4 billion to $ 3.1billion). Given the overwhelming evidence that a large number of inmates in Texan prisons are drug related cases then it is clear that the program has failed if not anywhere else in the eyes of the society. Given that the cost of maintaining an inmate per day is 50.79, it is clear that Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program needs more support before the prison system becomes unsustainable due to high costs (Donohue, & Siegelman, 2010). Community Supervision As noted earlier, the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program takes in both new cases as well as those from community supervision. In way of explanation, community supervision refers to a sentence that is carried out in the community instead of inside a prison cell. The Community Justice Assistance Division (CJAD) is the body mandated by the Texas government to administer and partially fund the adult community supervision in the state. At the present, the system supervises about 400 thousand people each given year with most of them being individuals with drug related problems. While some individuals are placed in direct supervision, others are on indirect supervision meaning that they are only expected to report to the supervisor within a given period. Statistics show that over 25% of the individuals on direct supervision are on drug related cases. Despite this statistics, the supervision system has been receiving minimal funding from the state government making it impossible for there to be effective follow-up programs on the offenders on probation (Chu, Sheng-Chen, & Ting, 2011). Addressing Recidivism and Revocation among Drug Offenders Ideally, the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program was created to address the problem of recidivism in the society. 1 After it formation, the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program under the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) is required to habitually compile recidivism and revocation data on people who have been put on community supervision or those that have been pardoned by presidential decree. In essence, these rates encompass the re-arrest and even the re-imprisonment rates of such cases. However, the challenge that Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program faces in trying to accomplish this is that there is usually no enough funding for them to be able to conduct this exercise in an effective manner. Given the high number of recidivism and revocation in relation to substance abuse, then there is a strong indication that the system is deficient. This failure can be attributed to the lack of funding that has characterized the program ever since it was established (Rajkumar, & French, 2014). Ideally, the biggest challenge that the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program has faced in its few years of existence is that in Texas, people who have been pardoned from state jails are usually not placed in any type of supervision and they are subjected to little or no treatment. In most cases, the crimes committed by such individuals make them ineligible for the SAFP program and it is therefore not surprising that two thirds of them end up being rearrested just a short time after release. Statistics have shown that over 44% of the people rearrested after serving time in prison were due to drug related cases. What this implies is that no matter the seriousness of the crime, any person who has been arrested for a drug related crime should be placed under the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program instead of being incarcerated. However, this is not likely to produce any fruits given that most the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program gets very little funding thus making it hard for them to function effectively (Rajkumar & French, 2014). An indication that the SAFP program has not been effective is evident from the high number of recidivism rates of individuals who have gone through the program. In 2006, there was a 50% recidivism rate of individuals who had gone through the program. In addition to this, the lack of enthusiasm for community supervisors to refer individuals under their care to the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program might be a clear indication that they have very little faith in the program in terms of offering the required results. However, the most plausible explanation for this is the lack of resources as well as its unavailability in the community. Experts point out that individuals in prisons are exposed to more opportunities as compared to their counterparts that have been placed under the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program thus making the program less attractive to both the offenders and the community supervisors (Buddress, 2012). Despite the important role that is played by the SAFP program in the community, it is clear that it has not received adequate support from the government. A wide cross-section of criminal justice practitioners and lawyers advocate for increased financial support for rehabilitation programs such as the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program and less reliance on imprisonment as a treatment for addiction. Despite the existence of great programs such as the SAFP, Texas still has the lowest rates of drug treatment and the highest imprisonment rates in the United States. In 2011, the 82nd Texas Legislature under which the SAFP program falls received a setback from the significant budget deficit that it experienced. Instead of going for the option of raising taxes to raise revenue, state leaders voted unanimously to reduce the state expenditure. This led to the drastic slashing of key government operation such as the support for the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program (Buddress, 2012). Although the apparent failure of the SAFP program has often been attributed to bad management, there might still be other reasons outside the scope of the program that have contributed to the failure. Compared to offenders that have been placed on regular community supervision, SAFP offenders get personalized supervision and have extra conditions of supervision that they must meet. To begin with, offenders under the SAFP program have to undergo at least three months in an in-house treatment facility after they have left the SAFP facility and stick to stringent rules such as curfews and mandatory program turnout. In addition to this, offenders that are under the SAFP program are subjected to regular drug testing as compared to those under the regular supervision. Unlike the offenders under the regular supervision, SAFP offenders must stick to the treatment set out by the counselors and the supervising officials. In addition to this, each offender is assigned a case manager who is supposed to pay offer closer supervision to the offender as compared to an offender who is under a regular community supervisor. The challenge that this poses is that most offenders under the regular community supervision end up being referred to the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program. Once an offender has been transferred to the SAFP program, the officers running the program often deal with the client based on the recommendation of the community supervisor. In most cases, the community supervisor makes the wrong judgment regarding the level of treatment that the offender should be offered. Given that officers within the program are trying to work under a strict program, majority of them do not take the offender through the various processes that offenders that are transferred to the program from the courts go through and hence such offenders are denied the full recovery path that the rest of the offenders go through. Although there is no enough evidence to support this assumption, there is a high possibility noted recidivism is from offenders that join the rehabilitation program while it is on progress (Byrne, 2013). After completing the program, SAFP clients are required to undergo a mandatory outpatient counseling session of one month. However, due to limited funding, the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program does not cater for clients who have been referred to the program from elsewhere. In the recent past, research has shown that SAFP clients who go through this counseling session have a recidivism rate of 43% lesser that the SAFP clients who failed to attend the counseling program. In most cases, a client is supposed to pay for the outpatient counseling session. The problem that this provision presents is that a large percentage of offenders are African-Americans and people of color whose income levels is low as compared to the indigenous people. This makes it hard for them to attend the counseling session ad hence the high rate of recidivism among people who have gone through this program. This means that before the program is branded a failure, people should consider the factors that have contributed to the failure of the program and rectify them (Byrne, 2013). Conclusion The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program is an intensive and a low cost substance abuse program that the Texas State offers for offenders undergoing probation. Under this program, offenders charged with drug related programs are referred to the program instead of being incarcerated. Given that drug related crime often comes with other challenges such as mental problems then incarceration becomes an unattractive method of addressing this problem. The ideal thing about the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment (SAFP) program is that it addresses every facet of the offender’s problem and therefore leads to more success rates. In recent days, the program has however been found to be ineffective due to the high recidivism rate of those who have gone through the program. This high rate of recidivism has been identified to be the result of low funding as well as the transference of clients to the program thus making it hard for them to go through the entire stipulated program. 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