Drug Crime and Justice in Contemporary Perspective

Thus, drug abuse tends to increase the crime rate in the country. Despite the drug abuse increasing the crime levels, there has been a drastic decrease in the crime rate since 1990 (Walter). Several sources have shown similar trend of decline in the crime rate. One of these resources is the annual FBI report which indicated an overall decrease in crime rate in 2017 by 0. 8 percentage as compared to the violent crime rate in 2016 (FBI, 2018). The ground rules ensure high standards of justice and fairness unlike in countries where democracy does not exist. In the democratic country, the suspects of the crime are treated fairly and are not convicted until they are found guilty. This gives the suspects the chance to defend their innocence.

In addition, the ground rules have reduced the rate of police killing through shooting the offenders or convicted members after a short trial (Friedman et al. Thus, the rights of every individual member of the society are not violated. The community-focused crime strategies focus on changing the culture, infrastructure, and physical environment to reduce the crime rate. This influences the social behaviour of people determines their influence in violent crime. Some of the interventions used by the communities to reduce crime rate include; community disciplinary efforts, policing and neighboured watch. These strategies seek to engage the residents, community faith organizations, local governments in reducing the community crime, disorder, and drug abuse. According to Walter (2015), one of the strategies used to addresses the crime rate is the liberal crime control theory.

One may think that decline in crime rate reduces the prison population but this is not the case. According to the report from the Brennan Centre for Justice, the imprisonment and crime rate are not directly proportional. Instead, the crime rate and the prison population trends in the opposite way. There are different factors which may cause the prison population to increase with declining crime rate. According to Walter (2014), one of the factors that lead to higher number of prisoners with declining population is the effectiveness in policing. When the police arrest the drug traffickers, the quantity of the drugs in the market reduces. This increases the demand for the drugs and as a result, the prices increase and remaining smugglers make higher profits in smaller quantities.

Since the prices of the drugs are higher, people may be forced to steal to get the cash for acquiring drugs. This leads to higher crime rate within the society. Also, Gaines and Kremling, (2014), states that the police tend to focus more on arresting people instead of focusing on the fighting the root cause of crime rate. The victimized people may lose their property, material costs and immaterial costs. This affects the growth of the small businesses such as sole proprietorship. The high crime rates also force the government to spend a lot of money in planning and implementing measures aimed at reducing the crime rate (Dahl, 2017). Some the government money is used in detecting, prosecuting and punishing the criminals. Thus, the government spends a lot of money which could have been used for development in minimizing crime.

Some people associate drug use with weakness and immorality (Walters et al. It is also seen as an individual problem which does not need the society to intervene. Therefore, to change this negative perception towards the drug addicts the government should do the following; implement drug policies that respect human rights and health, encourage sharing and implementation of the policies, and develop the policies based on the solid scientific evidence. References Gaines, Larry K. , and Janine Kremling. Available at: https://www. brennancenter. org/sites/default/files/publications/Crime%20in%202017%20A%20Preliminary%20Analysis. pdf. Allison, Stuart FH, Amie M. gov/crime-in-the-u. s/2017/preliminary-report. Friedman, Matthew, Ames C. Grawert, and James Cullen. Crime Trends, 1990-2016. Justice Quarterly, vol 31, no. 1, 2012, pp. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.