Once they're arrested that screws up their chances of recovery though. Even if an officer formally books someone and puts them in the drunk tank until the methamphetamine wears off so they don't scratch their own face down to the bone, they were still arrested. That arrest follows them around, and it severely reduces their chances of finding employment that will actually motivate them to work towards financial goals instead of merely just getting by. A lot of former drug addicts end up working in construction or commercial sailing not because they're too dull to be hydronautics engineers or factory logistics overseers, but because those are two of the few well paying industries who will hire regardless of your arrest record.
The U.S. has one of the highest re-offense rates out of any developed nation because an arrest is something employers, banks, and even privately run welfare programs all see as a permanent red flag. It's like someone figuratively puts walls in the way so the person with the arrest on their record is confined to a tiny square, cut off from viable opportunities. What makes it even worse is the combination where some states don't expunge records of juvenile offenses when you turn eighteen if they're federal offenses, and records of arrests aren't differentiated by how long ago they happened. If you got thrown in juvie at sixteen for mail fraud for using your uncle's name to scam magazine subscriptions then in some places like New Jersey that'll still be there when you're forty and will be treated as if it happened yesterday.
From a macro view there's more harm done when you arrest an addict than if you had left them to teeter on the edge of an overdose, which is just really messed up. All because of zero tolerance policies from organizations that have nothing to do with law enforcement.
Arrests do not follow you around if you do just a little effort to legally fight it. Until you are convicted you are innocent, you just need to follow the process to ensure that you are never listed as guilty by no contest (which is sadly often the default if you don't ask for a court hearing).
I wouldn't expect a drug addict to know the above, but it still needs to be stated. If anyone happens to be arrested in the US make sure you don't accidentally get listed as guilty and served time (that night in jail counts as time served so if the judge would sentence you to one night in jail)
There's a heavy need for rehabilitation shelters, but the public at large looks down on addicts and refuses to fund them. That leaves organizations like the Salvation Army to take up the slack, and the results can negligible. There's very little support on the private shelter's side other than providing a roof, a cot, and some basic directions to nearby organizations. Meanwhile the addict is meant to improve their behaviour almost immediately, fight the shelter itself to maintain their cot, and facilitate setting up their own recovery. Many of them choose to be homeless rather than put up with the ridiculous standards of these privately run shelters. Meanwhile on the public side it's a problem we started working on in the 1970s after the Vietnam War created a large wave of drug users, but Reagan gutted psychiatric care in the U.S. in 1982 and that meant that any progress towards making those shelters a reality was smashed into shards. What we were left with is people being put into psychiatric facilities that don't have the type of structure needed to rehabilitate an addict.
There's no way up from the bottom other than having another person take your hand. And nobody wants to be the one to reach down their hand. They rely on broken organizations and inappropriate tools to do that because their proximity to that ruin makes them uncomfortable. Either the addict gets screwed by the police or they get screwed by the rehabilitation facilities. So the addicts decide to turn away from both, and the public decides to turn away from the addicts. As you said, those in the public ostracize and shun them.
I can provide some, specifically the section on probation in [1] and "drug war logic" in [2], though it's not really something you need a source for. If you arrest someone it affects them for the rest of their life. Drug abuse is a terrible affliction, but it's still temporary. The abuse stops when access is revoked. Revoking that access can be a difficult and sometimes even dangerous process, but it marks the end. It can begin again if it's induced by an addiction, but that merely starts another temporary behaviour.
That's not even considering systems, like how a single arrest introduces costs to the state because of the transportation, the provided meals during their stay, the hygiene standards the arrestee must go through, and the required paperwork. Or how it affects total prosperity by almost guaranteeing that someone will be stuck with less productive and less meaningful employment for the rest of their lives, reducing taxes the town/city, county, state, and federal government can take and that person's own contributions to the local economy.
When someone is a danger to innocent people walking by who didn't choose to do any fentanyl, their recovery chances are secondary to the safety of the innocent passers by. The people who advocate for leaving them on the street never want to take responsibility when one of them kills a random kid for fun. That may be something that only a small minority of fentanyl addicts are going to do, but it's not something that we have any obligation to allow in the name of helping drug addicts.
That's the biggest issue. The police aren't the correct solution, at least in their current form, but there are no other solutions. Is it worth it to unfairly limit one person's life in order to protect them and people around them from a short period of harmful behaviour? If that limitation was temporary, yes. But it isn't temporary. Being arrested and having a minor possession charge that will be erased after five years without the person re-offending wouldn't be as bad.
> Is it worth it to unfairly limit one person's life in order to protect them and people around them from a short period of harmful behaviour? If that limitation was temporary, yes
I think the question turns on scale. If one person has the capacity to harm dozens, as one does in a city, the calculus may shift towards incapacitation. If it’s a small handful of non-violent interactions, on the other hand, as would be more likely somewhere less dense, then I agree with you. (Same turn on access to weapons.)
>That may be something that only a small minority of fentanyl addicts are going to do, but it's not something that we have any obligation to allow in the name of helping drug addicts.
Yep. There is no solution except to shoot those filthy addicts, amirite?
I mean who wants to spend $35-50K/annum to keep these scum in prison, right?
In fact, why should my tax dollars pay for any of these subhuman criminals, addicts and other undesirables? A bullet only costs a dime.
That's the way to go, right soerxpso? Pew! Pew! Pew!
The U.S. has one of the highest re-offense rates out of any developed nation because an arrest is something employers, banks, and even privately run welfare programs all see as a permanent red flag. It's like someone figuratively puts walls in the way so the person with the arrest on their record is confined to a tiny square, cut off from viable opportunities. What makes it even worse is the combination where some states don't expunge records of juvenile offenses when you turn eighteen if they're federal offenses, and records of arrests aren't differentiated by how long ago they happened. If you got thrown in juvie at sixteen for mail fraud for using your uncle's name to scam magazine subscriptions then in some places like New Jersey that'll still be there when you're forty and will be treated as if it happened yesterday.
From a macro view there's more harm done when you arrest an addict than if you had left them to teeter on the edge of an overdose, which is just really messed up. All because of zero tolerance policies from organizations that have nothing to do with law enforcement.