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Drug Courts: The Elizabeth Johnson Drug Court Case

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Drug Courts: The Elizabeth Johnson Drug Court Case
Drug Courts
Elizabeth Johnson was a model student. She was characterized by her teachers as hardworking, driven, and goal oriented. After being placed on the honor roll and graduating early from Morris High School in Will County, Illinois, she attended Northern Illinois University to become a lawyer. Within her first year at college, her life derailed. She was caught by the police and arrested for possession of marijuana. Johnson was expecting to be placed in prison but she found herself in a drug court, which assigned her mandatory drug rehabilitation. After graduating from the rehabilitation program, she went back to school at John Marshall Law School, and passed the bar exam. Now, after seven years of completing the drug program, she has …show more content…
First, it would lower the percentage of drug users in prison from 51.4% to around 17% (Berman). This would vastly lower the economic costs of maintaining the prisons. Moreover, it would only cost 1.2 billion dollars to create drug courts throughout the nation (Gorsman). The proposed 1.2 billion dollars is a fraction of 135.8 billion dollars the nation already pays for the creation of rehabilitative programs (Lyons). The rehabilitative programs are already built and running. These drug courts would enforce mandatory attendance to the program. In fact, it would save about 1.4 million dollars per 200 people per year. (Lyons). The estimated savings would easily cover the costs of creating the drug courts after a few …show more content…
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