Restructuring the Criminal System

Drug use and addiction is most often brought about when a person is suffering from mental illness. So, treating these people like criminals instead of like sick people doesn’t make sense.
The criminal justice system, the only system we have, takes a kid who is addicted to heroin or crack or meth who was selling it because he needs access to it and gets busted with it, and they stick them in prison. Who is also in prison? Real criminals are there, those who have done property crimes, rapists and murderers; and what happens? Well I don’t know for sure, but among the things we who have never been in prison can imagine happening …  the kid learns how to be a better criminal.
The people don’t get counseling that is effective, they don’t learn any coping skills or strategies to make a difference in their life outside the restricted atmosphere of the prison, and they have not received any real support from anyone to make up for what they consider weakness in their own persons. In short, they have not learned any thing about staying out of prison once they are given a second chance. In fact, they probably have only learned things and et people that will land them right back in prison, and maybe for something more destructive than the drugs.
I suppose that continuing calling it a crime is one way to get the most troubled individuals into the system to get help. However they get there, the system that they go into needs to be radically different than what is currently in place. It could be a sub-category, which might make sense due to the fact that prisons are referred to as corrections facilities. What would be more corrective than helping someone learn to cope with life, learn to recognize when they are having problems and what to do about the times that things are out of control? This would help them to correct their behavior and the way they process information which influences the decisions they make.
What I think the corrections people should do is determine to build new separate facilities, but they need to be completely cut-off from traditional prison facilities.
This facility should be fenced, and the individuals taken there should be made to remain inside for whatever length of time the system sees fit to sentence them to.
In this facility, the individuals would be housed in barracks or dormitory like facilities with two persons to a room, which will be monitored 24/7. This would be a first step in moving the person into a lifestyle and teaching them habits that will be less maladaptive than what they were doing before they came to prison. There will be only 32 beds per building, on three floors. There would be as many of these buildings as needed scattered around the grounds. Each building will have its own kitchen and dining facility that will be operated by the individuals living in the building, to promote a sense of ownership.
There would be separate buildings as well. There will be a gym and exercise facility; there will be two buildings with class rooms, and a vocational training building. There will also be a separate counseling facility where the individuals will receive one-on-one counseling as well as attending group meetings.
The grounds will be manicured and tended; the individuals incarcerated there would be doing the work around the facility, maintaining the grounds and helping with the maintenance of the buildings. The grounds will be full of wide paved paths and interesting landscape, all aimed at providing as normal a life as possible.
The individuals confined in the facilities will have their days filled and regimented so that there would be very little of the day that was not engineered to help the people learn new skills, new habits and make the shift toward and more adaptive way of life. They would get up in the morning, straighten up their room for inspection, go either to physical training, or to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. After showers and breakfast there would be classes either about vocations, general education, addictions, or there would be counseling. The individuals will rotate through these different classes, stopping for lunch, and then there would be dinner. After dinner is more physical training, with a few hours of recreation time, which will be closely monitored so that each individual feels safe.
Granted, this would be expensive, and staff intensive. But this is the way to help people change themselves, and change the way they look at life. It would help them change the way they go about conducting their lives. It would help them change the habits they developed growing up. It would give them a new life expectancy. It would help them correct the errors or correct for the errors that had led them to whatever decisions made it so they were incarcerated.
Beyond this the system needs to also ease these people back into society. They need to be assisted in gaining employment, regaining housing, getting in with doctors and counselors. They need to be helped applying the skills and strategies they learned of the 15 years or whatever time they spent on the inside.
People that have the issues that led them to drugs can learn to cope; they can change their ways and their habits, and the way they process information to make the right decisions. If the system we have in place was reformed to accommodate their needs we could produce many more ‘up right citizens’ than we do now.