Substance Use Disorder

Shelters are not meeting people’s needs, and the city is clearing encampments, says City Councilmember Roberto Treviño.

Efforts to address the harms of police violence and incarceration must consider the drug war, activists and treatment professionals note, including the punitive models of treatment.

Nicole Poston was sentenced in July for punching a police officer after she slipped free from a handcuff. Life sentences, even for nonhomicide offenses like Poston’s, are ‘a major factor’ in mass incarceration in the U.S., a criminal justice expert said.

Advocates say the pandemic has exacerbated the overdose crisis in the state by forcing people into isolation and impeding access to treatment.

Social Workers address crises regularly and without an armed police officer standing in front of us. Often, the presence of an armed officer escalates a crisis that could have been better handled by mental health professionals alone.

In Cook County, Illinois, suspected or confirmed fatal overdose deaths doubled over last year in the first five months of this year.

In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers, journalists, and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines—like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine—so that everyone can understand them. Wherever possible, we try to utilize the stories of […]

For many people across the U.S. who need methadone treatment, sheltering in place during the coronavirus outbreak is impossible.

Social distancing orders are a necessity, but they create a host of new problems for people in treatment for substance use disorders.

With special guest host Leo Beletsky, a professor of Law and Health Sciences at Northeastern University, and criminal justice reform advocate Morgan Godvin.

Rather than separating families, child ‘welfare’ agencies should help families get access to the care they need.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. “As soon as Julie Eldred was granted probation for stealing jewelry to buy drugs, she got busy fulfilling the judge’s conditions,” Jan Hoffman reported for the New York Times […]

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood and District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer intend to openly defy a 1975 state Supreme Court precedent that says law enforcement cannot intentionally discriminate against a person or group of people.

Nearly half of all arrests in the state are drug or alcohol related, compared to just 29 percent nationally.

Recent legal victories have spurred counties and states to provide medication-assisted treatment to prisoners struggling with substance use.

‘Worst policy imaginable’ punishes, rather than treats, patients who earn less than a dollar an hour, advocates say.

In May 2016, 26-year-old Caleb Smith was prepping for medical school entry exams, and ordered what he thought was Adderall off the internet to help him study. After the package arrived at his home in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, his girlfriend, 26-year-old Amanda Leach, asked to try some. Smith obliged, and days later, Leach was found dead […]