The purpose of this literature review is to prove that alternatives to incarceration such as drug treatment court (DTC) reduces the use of drugs, decreases criminal activity, reduce costs of incarceration and return offenders to the community as productive members and yield better results than to have them sent to jail. These programs are usually offered to defendants as an alternative to probation or short-term incarceration. This topic is a problem worthy of inquiry, because when you unnecessarily incarcerate offenders it becomes costly and their substance abuse issues are not effectively being addressed which promotes a revolving door for reentry into the judicial system and relapse.What evidence do you have to back these claims? How…show more content… One study conducted by Rempel, Green, and Kralstein (2012 ) “The impact of adult drug courts on crime and incarceration: findings from a multi-site quasi-experimental design” gave insight on how drug court programs have resulted in a positive reduction in criminal behavior for those who participated. A lot of this research rendered results stating that the drug treatment programs are expanding within the states which is an indication that they are doing well.citations? However, after multiple searches no results were found on exactly which states have a better success rate with DTC vs incarceration which would be very interesting to know . According to Candela, Messer & Patten (2016), article “Drug Courts and the Facilitation of Turning Points” During the interviews, participants discussed how drug court helped them attain many important skills/ideas: self-esteem, improved relationships with family and children, a general educational development certificate, a driver’s license, and/or gainful…show more content… These incarcerations are a waste of taxpayers’ money. With 2.3 million people incarcerated, those estimates suggest there are as many as 100,000 people locked up who do not belong there, costing some $3.5 billion annually. On average, each inmate costs taxpayers roughly $36,286 per year. When we multiply that figure by the 2.3 million state and federal inmates incarcerated (one in every 110 adults), we get a cost of $83.5 billion, which means the average taxpayer pays $260 each year for incarceration. (Robertson, Robertson
