President Nixon declared a “war on drugs”, and increased the size of federal drug control agencies. To help combat the use of drugs, mandatory sentencing was implemented, which granted for a first time offense a minimum sentence of 5 years in a federal prison. By the Reagan presidency, the number of non-violent drug offenders imprisoned skyrocketed from 50,000 to over 400,000 by 1997 (“A Brief History of the Drug war”). As a result of the incarcerations many families have been left broken. Fathers have been separated from their children, and sons and daughters have been taken away and placed in prisons instead of …show more content…
First there needs to be consistency in their rules, a person may be eligible in one county but not in the next one over. A benefit of Drug Courts is that they offer oversight on the progress. The problem is that it’s done by a judge, which equals punishment rather than rehabilitation. To counter this, I propose for a single official appointed by the Drug Court to oversee a small group, this way a connection is made and mutual encouragement is formed. The National Institute of Justice reports that there are roughly 1,538 Drug Courts in the United States (“Drug Courts”). This program is out of reach to millions of Americans and should be expanding at a higher rate in order to make it accessible to