Arresting officers offering treatment

~ Jason Schwartz

Path_to_Recovery_PicI’ve talked a lot on this blog about there being a lot of choices between locking people up and legalizing drugs. Here’s one option.

For three days last week, officers from Prince William County, Manassas City and Manassas Park raided 19 locations and arrested 53 people as part of their ongoing battle, now called “Operation Dragon Slayer,” against heroin and illegal prescription drug dealing. Nothing too unusual there.

But after each arrest, a detective or officer sat down with the suspect and made this offer: We have a chaplain available right now to take you to a drug treatment center, where counselors are ready and waiting — right now— to get you into the treatment you need today.

I’d love to see what would happen if this practice became widespread.

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.

One thought on “Arresting officers offering treatment”

  1. In my state (Oregon) it costs approximately 84 dollars a day to lock someone up. If the only thing a person has done is abuse drugs doesn’t it make more sense to spend maybe 50 bucks a day to get them better. Even if they are selling drugs it still makes sense. If they get sober I would think the chances they would stop selling drugs would go up dramatically. Even if the price were exactly the same, we would still win because the recidivism rates would decrease.

    Blame and shame recovery tactics did not help very many addicts get better, neither does putting them in a jail cell.

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