Posted: August 15th, 2022
Drug Court Sanction
Drug Court Sanction
You are a drug court judge and a drug user is appearing before you for the fourth time. This offender has more potential than you have seen in a long time.
She has finished three years of college, earning high grades, but simply does not seem to successfully complete drug rehabilitative programs.
What will be your approach with this offender?
What sanction will you give her?
Drug Court Sanction
Addiction is a psychological and physical chronic disease caused by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences. Constant failure to beat addiction might be an indicator of a lack of self-will on the drug addict’s part. As long as an addict is willing to put in the hard work, recovery is certain. This is because in life, the presence of various stressors and triggers push a recovering addict to relapse. Knowledge of these factors helps a lot to eliminate the condition of reward cues (Chandler, 2009). Repeated drug rehabilitative program failures highlight the presence of a strong underlying factor that needs to be uprooted. A person’s experiences since childhood might form such a factor or her immediate environment. It is therefore, imperative to understand her in-depth rather than just studying her file.
Given that she has a high potential and is a nonviolent drug abuser, termination and eventual jailing are still not needed. She will, however, face strict sanctions of other forms. Failing the drug rehabilitative programs three times is high indicating that more needs to be done to help her. I would advise that from now on, she should partake in community service every week. Community service will keep her away from the triggers that may induce relapse in her neighborhood and it will teach her useful and adaptive life skills. It also provides a sense of accomplishment which over time, can help override her self-reward disorder. Day-to-day reporting will also be mandatory. She will have to check in with her probation officer when not in classes for counseling sessions, job training and drug testing. This will help her become more accountable for her actions and have someone directly assisting her.
References
Chandler, R., Fletcher, B., & Volkow, N. (2009). Treating Drug Abuse and Addiction in the Criminal Justice System. JAMA, 301(2), 183. doi: 10.1001/jama.2008.976
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