Mohamad Bzeih

English 301

11 May 2017

Annotated Bibliography APA

Working Title:

Rehabilitation and the War on Drugs

Research Question:

The War on Drugs incarcerates half the prison population for non-violent drug related crimes.
What measures are being taken to rehabilitate these offenders for society?

Working Thesis:

Despite the intent to prevent drug usage in the United States, the policies that make-up the War

on Drugs need to be revised because those who suffer from drug abuse need to be treated instead

sentenced.

Introduction:

AWar on Drugs began in 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared usage of drugs

such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin the cause of many social-economic problems in the

United States, it was public enemy number one(A Brief History of the Drug War 2016). Policies

against possession and usage of narcotics gave minimum sentences from five to ten years for

offenders(2016). Today, the percentage of federal incarcerations for drug offenses is now

82,109(46.4%) of all federal offenses(Federal Bureau of Prisons 2017). The goal of these strict

regulations and multiple incarcerations is to both punish current offenders and to discourage

those are potential drug users. The idea as presented by Ojmarrh Mitchell was to reduce the

supply and demand of narcotics, first by decreasing the demand by threatening a minimum
prison sentence, which in turn would decrease the production of these drugs(Ojmarrh Mitchell

2017). Forty years later nothing has changed, with a shift in public approval and through

experimentation, both demand and supply respectively have increased(2017). Furthermore,

recidivism rates, the likelihood of someone returning to prison after being released, have not seen

improvement, meaning those who are released from prison are later found to be using or in

possession of the same drugs which had them incarcerated(2017). The number of prisoners is

exponentially increasing and a large number of people who are not receiving treatment returning

to prison, rehabilitation and treatment methods provide better tools to end the need for a war on

drugs(2016). Despite the intent to prevent drug abuse in the United States, the retributional

policies that make-up the war on drugs should give way to rehabilitation because those who

suffer from drug abuse need to be treated instead of given five to ten years in prison.

Annotations:

A Brief History of the Drug War. (2016, September 16). Retrieved March 15, 2017, from

http://www.drugpolicy.org/facts/new-solutions-drug-policy/brief-history-drug-war-0

A overview of the policies and nuances of the War on Drugs describing its effect in the decades

leading up to today.

The website offers a decade by decade description of the War on Drugs with the salient details

needed to get the message across. It will be used to help the reader who may not know

much detail about the War on Drugs and needs a quick overview. I will use this source to

help setup my position by explaining the details of the War on Drugs before I make an

argument against it.

Federal Bureau of Prisons. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2017, from

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp

A government website that tracks statistics about federal prisons providing data about types of

inmates based on race, age, and crime committed.

This page is government backed demographics about the inmates occupying federal prisons. I

will use it to support the idea that drug offenses are the most common in our penitentiary

system and connect it with information about the War on Drugs to argue against why it's

so high.

Mitchell, O., Cochran, J. C., Mears, D. P., & Bales, W. D. (2017, February 08). The

Effectiveness of Prison for Reducing Drug Offender Recidivism: a regression

discontinuity analysis. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-017-9282-6

A journal highlighting the recidivism rates of those incarcerated for drug related offenses

and which methods are most effective in reducing recidivism

I will use this source to support my main point which is that the current system of capital

punishment for nonviolent drug crimes does not solve the issues relating to drug use. It

provides links to research to show that recidivism rates suffer when a convicted persons

is not offered proper treatment options.

Rosenberg, A., Groves, A., & Blankenship, K. (2016, December 21). Comparing Black and

White Drug Offenders. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022042616678614

An editorial focusing on racial issues of the War on Drugs and how the enforcement of policies

racially discriminates.
I will use this source to help highlight the ineffectiveness of the current policies of the War on

Drugs. It highlights the biggest problem about the recidivism rates of black and latino

persons who are offered fewer opportunities for rehabilitation and are targeted by

officials for arrest.