Incarceration vs Treatment
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The point of this paper is incarceration versus treatment of low level drug offenders in California. The position in favor of incarceration is supported by the deterrence and Incapacitation Theory. This theory promotes increased arrests, prosecutions, and prison sentences as the primary means to dissuade drug use and street crime by removing the offender from the community. The theory further states that by executing stricter sanctions targeting low level drug offenders further reduces drug related crime by increasing the personal costs of drug use among incipient users. Differing arguments state that by simply punishing the offender it does not address the causes of drug use and addiction. The people that hold this point of view feel treatment would be an effective solution. My viewpoint coincides with the later argument. I feel the costs as well as the effectiveness of treatment outweigh that of incarceration. According to the California Department of Corrections, it costs an average of $21,470 per year to house an inmate in a California state prison. The breakdown of this amount is as follows (in average costs per year): $193 reception/ diagnosis, $9,833 security, $3,263 health care, $6,892 cost of living, and $1,288 for inmate work/training...