"Health & Medical News"

From:
Treatment Research Institute
600 Public Ledger Building, 150 S. Independence Mall West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: (215) 399-0980
http://www.tresearch.org

Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The vast majority of U.S. taxpayers say that youth offenders can be rehabilitated and that failing to do so is tantamount to giving up on their future, according to a new survey and study.

A poll (PDF format, 246 KB) conducted by the Center for Children’s Law and Policy found that 70 percent of Americans view imprisoning young offenders without providing rehabilitation negatively, while 90 percent believe that nearly all young offenders have the potential for change.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The vast majority of U.S. taxpayers say that youth offenders can be rehabilitated and that failing to do so is tantamount to giving up on their future, according to a new survey and study.

A poll (PDF format, 246 KB) conducted by the Center for Children’s Law and Policy found that 70 percent of Americans view imprisoning young offenders without providing rehabilitation negatively, while 90 percent believe that nearly all young offenders have the potential for change.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Increased community-based addiction treatment could help trim growing prison expenses in Vermont, according to a group of four Democratic members of the Vermont Senate.

The Vermont Press Bureau reported Jan. 17 that the lawmakers unveiled a plan to close down a prison in Waterbury, convert another to a women’s-only facility, and use a third as a program for offenders with alcohol and other drug problems. The broader overhaul of the state’s prison system would emphasize providing treatment to addicted offenders in community settings rather than sending them to state prisons.

Popularity: unranked [?]

A proposed U.S.-funded antidrug plan for Mexico could exacerbate an already dire prison overcrowding problem south of the border, USA Today reported Dec. 6.

Currently, Mexico’s prisons hold about 217,000 inmates in facilities designed for no more than 164,000. But beefing up Mexico’s justice system and sending more drug offenders to prison is a big part of the $1.4-billion Merida Initiative, a pending proposal for greater U.S.-Mexico cooperation in fighting drug trafficking.

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Thousands of prisoners convicted of crack-cocaine offenses could see their sentences cut and be released from prison if the U.S. Sentencing Commission makes recent changes in sentencing guidelines retroactive, the Los Angeles Times reported Nov. 12.

A new policy aimed at equalizing penalties for crack and powder cocaine, if applied to past as well as future offenders, would cut an average of about two years off the sentences of 19,500 federal prisoners, which would result in the release of about 2,500 prisoners.

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Locking up a swelling cadre of methamphetamine users and dealers has given Georgia the fastest-growing prison population in the U.S., according to state prison officials.

The Moultrie Observer reported Oct. 23 that Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner James Donald said that the prison system is now operating at 105 percent of capacity. “We know exactly where our population is coming from,” he said. “We’ve taken in 250 to 300 meth-related criminals each month, almost 3,000 a year. Ninety-seven percent of them are white, by the way … That’s really crowding us in our jails.”

Popularity: unranked [?]

U.S. prisons now house a record 2.1 million inmates, but a U.S. Census report says that prison growth began to level off during the early 2000s, the Washington Post reported Sept. 27.

The 2006 census data in the American Community Survey showed that the prison population grew 4 percent since 2000, a far more modest increase that the 77-percent growth between 1990 and 2000. Experts generally agree that tough drug sentencing laws led to the spike in prison populations during the 1990s.

Popularity: unranked [?]