If you have ever been on the receiving or the giving end of the criminal justice reform machine and you are honest with yourself you have probably, "although under your breath" ask the question, "are we really trying to make them productive members of society?"

I have ten years as a Police Officer under my belt and I served most of my time working narcotics. If I would have read this article 5 years ago I would undoubtedly have said, "What a bleeding hart". However I have also for the last several years been involved in treating substance abuse offenders. I discovered something significant. Your attitude can quickly change when a loved one gets caught in the criminal justice rinse cycle.

Before I go on let me clarify my views. In my opinion there are a group of people running around out there that need to be in jail and that the only rehabilitation suitable is to keep them away from society. However many of these offenders end up in court ordered treatment, probation, Drug Court, work diversion, and whatever else there is out there. I also believe that there are a great number of offenders that are reform able addicts. In fact I know many of them and can assure you there are many addicts that want to reform, try to reform, and indeed do reform. I have scene both sides of the coin and what I tell you is the truth.

Let me paint a familiar portrait. John Doe 26 years old works as a framer for a construction company. John started smoking marijuana when he was 15 when he became depressed due to a parental divorce. He quickly became addicted and has used marijuana ever sins whenever he needed to cope. Marijuana opened the door for some new drug experiences involving methamphetamine which he now uses approximately once a week.

The drug use makes John somewhat unreliable at his job so he finds himself bouncing from place to place and never moving up or getting pay increases. Then John gets pulled over leaving the bar one night, the astute officer quickly recognizes marijuana paraphernalia in the vehicle and later finds a meth pipe with meth residue on it. Now John is thrown head first into the criminal justice system. The officer rightly charges john with possession of meth a felony, possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia a misdemeanor, and of course DUI. Well John had it Cumming and at this point there is a great potential for reformation.

John undoubtedly has a drug problem and the public defender is going to use that defense as a means of getting the weighty felony reduced to a misdemeanor. This happens and John is ordered to get an assessment and follow recommended treatment as well as have an interlock device installed on his vehicle. He is also placed on probation, loses his drivers license, and has to do 10 days in the county jail. Now all of this seems reasonable after all he committed a felony and he was driving impaired.

Now before we as a society pat ourselves on our backs and congratulate each other for such masterful handling of the situation, let's see how all of this plays out for John. First Johns' car was State impounded due to the DUI statute, his already precarious financial situation makes the possibility of getting his vehicle out of impound very difficult. John has lost his license and is not supposed to drive he now has to put an interlock devise on his vehicle that will cost approximately $2400.00 depending on the location. John has lost his job because he was replaced while he was serving his jail sentence; a new job will not come easy because most blue collar work requires a valid driver's license and a vehicle to drive to the job site. John was living pay check to pay check anyway and now his other bills are backing up. John decides if he is going to survive he will have to drive regardless of the suspended license.

John finally gets a job but he is now hopelessly behind on his court fines and he has racked up several other fines for driving on the suspended license. John scraped the money together for the assessment but now has a warrant for non compliance because he is late on his fine payments and he has not been able to pay the money to attend treatment. Before long John is picked up for driving on suspension and arrested on the warrant, the judge wants him to know that he was serious about the order for treatment and the fine payment so He lets john sit in jail for a few days. John has lost his job again and now he is behind on payment for several courts he still needs to come up with the money for treatment and to get his vehicle out of impound so he can try and get a new job.

Faced with the abundant financial stress and hopelessness brought on by this impossible cycle John moves even deeper into the drug use. Throwing up his hands John embraces the drug culture and he will repeat this cycle for years.

We would all like to breathe a sigh of relief and say boy am I glad that I am not a low functioning druggy. We all have choices and obviously john has made some very bad decisions, but even if John is low functioning don't we still want him to succeed and to overcome his problems, isn't that what the system was trying to accomplish.

Maybe you are thinking that John made his bed and now he can lay in it, but if John was your son, brother or dad would you be as willing to write him off as deserving the outcome of his choices. Let me assure you John was someone's Son, brother and dad. And so now the cycle did not end with John but is perpetuated as I see John's kids entering the deadly cycle.