From the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution report A Prosecutor's Guide to Advancing a Public Health Response to Drug Use:
Introduction
For decades, the United States has relied on the criminal system to respond to substance use disorder — with minimal success.1 Shortly before the publication of this guide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that over 93,000 people lost their lives to drug overdoses in the United States in 2020, an increase of nearly 30 percent from the previous year.2 These staggering figures illustrate the urgent need for criminal system actors, and prosecutors
in particular, to rethink their roles in one of America’s most intractable public health crises.
Laws, policies, and practices have provided prosecutors with immense power over how communities respond to the intersections of drug use, poverty, racial inequities, and public safety. Each day, prosecutors make choices that bear directly on the rights, health, and livelihood of people who use drugs. However, many prosecutors lack full awareness of how their policies and everyday actions can imperil the health and safety of the communities they are bound to
protect.
Between 1980 and 2016, drug-related arrests increased by 171 percent and now account for more than 1.5 million arrests annually — mostly for drug possession.3 Today, about one in five incarcerated people are jailed or imprisoned for a drug offense.4 Each year, the United States spends more than $47 billion on drug prohibition.5
Read the full report here.
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