The statistics are staggering but not surprising: 50% of people in state prisons have a substance use disorder. That’s half of everyone locked away—not because they’re violent, or dangerous, but because they’re sick. Compare that to 37% of unhoused people who struggle with substance use. The overlap is obvious, yet our response couldn’t be more different—or more backwards.
For unhoused people, addiction is treated as a social services problem, when services even exist. But once the police get involved—once someone is arrested for survival crimes, drug possession, or simply being visible while homeless—it becomes a criminal issue. It’s a grim pipeline: poverty, housing instability, untreated addiction, and, finally, incarceration.
The truth is, both systems—the streets and the jails—are warehouses for people society has failed to help. But incarceration turns that failure into profit, feeding a system that was never designed to heal anyone. You don’t fix substance use by locking people in cages, ripping them away from family, stability, and the very resources that might help them recover. You don’t treat addiction with barbed wire and concrete.
Worse, the very fact that half the prison population has a substance use disorder doesn’t reflect some epidemic of criminal behavior—it reflects a political choice. We criminalized addiction. We criminalized poverty. We criminalized survival. And we continue to fund police, courts, and prisons at exponentially higher rates than we fund treatment, housing, or healthcare.
What makes this even more shameful is that evidence-based solutions exist. Housing First models, which provide shelter without requiring sobriety, reduce substance use and recidivism. Studies show that people who get their high school diploma in prison are far less likely to return. Yet, instead of scaling these approaches, we double down on punishment.
Consider the 37% of unhoused people battling addiction. Many are cycling through shelters, emergency rooms, and jails—racking up costs that exceed the price of simply housing and treating them. But there’s no political will to fund that. Meanwhile, we spend $81 billion a year on corrections—where nearly none of that money goes toward actual treatment.
If addiction is the problem, why is the solution prison?
The answer, of course, is that it isn’t. Prison doesn’t solve addiction—it worsens it. People leave prison sicker, poorer, and more likely to die of overdose. The system isn’t designed to heal; it’s designed to punish. But addiction is not a moral failing—it’s a public health issue. And we need to start treating it that way.
What if we invested in treatment instead of prison beds? What if we stopped criminalizing the disease and started offering people real support—mental health care, housing, jobs, community? What if we finally admitted that locking up sick people is a failure of policy, not a solution?
The 50% figure is not just a statistic. It’s a mirror reflecting our values—or lack of them. A country that fills its prisons with people who need help is not solving a drug crisis; it’s creating a human rights crisis.
It’s time to end the war on drugs, the war on the poor, and the war on our collective humanity. It’s time to fund care, not cages.
DG: “If addiction is the problem, why is the solution prison?”
Addiction isn’t “the” problem, addiction is the addicts problem; the societal problem with addiction is the effects of addiction on society.
There is so much wrong with you logic, but like your housing articles and RO’s responses, no use my responding with same responses to yet another article on the same flawed way of thinking.
“Addiction isn’t “the” problem, addiction is the addicts problem; the societal problem with addiction is the effects of addiction on society.”
Completely backwards. But I agree, no need to re-hash
So why should those us who are affected by Davis/blue-society allowing addicts to live on the streets take-it-for-the-team for those of you who live in the burbs and behind a gate? We all saw the rich people of east Davis come to the City Council meeting in 2018 and convince the Council to put the Respite Center in District 3 across from a liquor store. Social Justice dictates that it is the Council’s responsibility to stick the rich people of Davis with these problems. But no, stick it to District 3.
I was speaking to someone today who owns a property in San Francisco. They just decided to move into it rather than rent it out. The reason given is the incredible turnaround and cleanup of San Francisco because of the new mayor. But you, DG, with your ‘de-carceration’, defund-the-police, ‘harm-reduction’ #cough,cough#, ‘housing first’ philosophies would leave San Francisco as a sh*thole city because you believe the populous should just let people sleep/poop/shoot-up on the streets and threaten/annoy the populice. It’s almost too bad Davis didn’t sink as low as San Francisco so we could turn things around here, too. Unfortunately, in blue world, that seems to be what it takes.
I re-hashed. It’s so hard to see Davis and other cities destroyed by this way of thinking.
You act as though my policy preferences have been implemented.
Quote: “There is so much wrong with you logic, but like your housing articles and RO’s responses, no use my responding with same responses to yet another article on the same flawed way of thinking.”
(In my best Elvis voice, “thank you – thank you very much”. But I’m actually at least a little torn regarding this.)
Quote: “Addiction isn’t “the” problem, addiction is the addicts problem; the societal problem with addiction is the effects of addiction on society.”
(Maybe it’s some of “both”, at least regarding who can help – sometimes, at least).
Also reminds me of Norm MacDonald’s description of a “disease” in regard to a “legal” drug.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3IrJMumbWc
(I might be somewhat of a dreaded “do-gooder”. Hoping someone can “help” me with that.)