Dr. Ernest Drucker’s latest piece in the American Journal of Public notes the increasing consensus that the “culture of punishment” in the US has significant negative consequences for the health of the US population and calls for a new approach to criminal justice.
“A new approach to criminal justice is needed, one based on public health and prevention: primary prevention, to shrink the system by changing drug laws and stopping mass arrests; secondary prevention, to reduce the harms of imprisonment by building education, job training, and humane treatment into our prisons; and tertiary prevention, restoring life and justice to those needlessly serving long sentences, who pose no threat to public safety and cost us billions annually.”
Dr. Drucker adds
“It is time for a new system of pardons, executive clemency or general amnesty for these prisoners of the war on drugs and other punitive policies that have wasted so many young lives. The overarching imperative is to shift our criminal justice system from the goals of retribution and punishment to those of public health and restorative justice.”
For the full piece click here.
Ernest Drucker is an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine; and Senior Research Associate and Scholar in Residence at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of NY. He is licensed as a Clinical Psychologist in NY State and conducts research in AIDS, drug policy, and prisons and is active in public health and human rights efforts in the US and abroad.