Peer Reviewed Articles on Substance Abuse in African American Families

Introduction

Incarceration affects the lives of many African American men and often leads to poverty, ill health, violence, and a decreased quality of life. In that location has been an unprecedented increase in incarceration among African American males since 1970. Statistics show that the African American inmate population in federal prisons increased more than 500% between 1986 and 2004 (Mauer, 2004). Substance abuse in African American males leads to higher mortality rates. They are more likely to exist victims of crimes, have higher rates of alcohol related bug, and are more than likely to contract HIV/AIDS. Approximately fourscore% of the incarcerated adults in the U.S. have a history of interest with alcohol or illicit drugs (Conklin et al., 2000; Beck et al., 2002). Substance use disorders (SUDs) have a wide range of effects, impacting not but the private but also the entire family. SUDs lead to physical and mental wellness problems, touch relationships, cause financial losses, and occasionally lead to legal problems. SUDs are also associated with domestic violence, traffic accidents, and law-breaking.

Discussion

In U.S., one-quarter to i-third of black men will be incarcerated at some time in their lives (Bonczar and Beck, 1997; Hattery and Smith, 2008). Co-ordinate to a report from the Agency of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2006, the national incarceration rate for African Americans was 2,290 per 100,000 compared to 412 for Whites and 742 for Hispanics (Harrison and Beck, 2006). In 2009, the incarceration rate among black males (4,749 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents) was 6.7 times that of white males and 2.6 times that of Hispanic males (Figure 1).

Effigy 1. Comparison of incarceration rates among African Americans, Whites and Hispanics in 2006 and 2009.

Males accounted for 87% of the jail population on June 30, 2011. Whites deemed for 45% of the total, blacks 38%, and Hispanics fifteen% of inmates (Minton, 2011). The 2010 Demography showed that the U.South. population was 308.7 million. African Americans comprised only 14% (42 one thousand thousand) of U.Southward. population but comprised 38% of the jail population. If the incarceration of African American males continues at such a high rate, then i in three African American males built-in will exist expected to spend fourth dimension in prison during their lifetime (Bonczar, 2003). This high rate of incarceration has resulted in more African American males involved with the criminal justice system than with educational services.

Approximately 90% of people who are incarcerated will return to communities and families located primarily in poor urban and rural areas. Each year, 600,000 adult offenders and 100,000 juvenile offenders return to these communities and families, and approximately 50% of the returnees are African American (Travis, 2005). Urban substance users' risk of incarceration will exist exacerbated by neighborhood physical and social disorder hazards like public consumption of alcohol, selling drugs, loitering, and crime or violence (Whitaker et al., 2011). Risk factors related to neighborhood disadvantage volition lead to 60–lxx% of disparities in criminal justice and recidivism (Sampson et al., 2005; Chauhan et al., 2009).

State governments spend one fourth of their budgets on correctional facilities. Although the analysis of FBI and BJS information between 1960 and 2008 found a significant decrease in both tearing and belongings crime between 1992 and 2008, the charge per unit of the incarceration has continued to increase drastically. More than 60% incarcerations were for non-violent offenses, resulting in more money spent on correctional facilities than educational activity. A reduction in the incarceration rate for non-violent offenses would save an estimated $17 billion per year, with the largest share of these savings accruing to financially squeezed states and local governments (Schmitt et al., 2010).

Risk factors for incarceration include prior incarceration, younger age, male gender, racial-ethnic minority groups (African Americans and Hispanics), and modifiable hazard factors like co-occurring SUDs, lack of Medicaid insurance, untreated schizophrenia, and beingness homeless. Men with incarceration history may exist more prone to violence, equally incarceration leads to risk factors such as unemployment, economic stress, substance abuse, marital conflicts, victimization, and depression academic accomplishment (Freudenberg, 2001; Pettit and Western, 2004; Smith, 2008; Washburn et al., 2008). Drug dealing appears to be a meaning adventure cistron for developing SUD particularly in African American adolescent males (Centers and Weist, 1998). Racism and discrimination, language barriers, and dealing with social service agencies accept also been associated with SUDs within minority populations (Finn, 1994).

A loftier prevalence of substance abuse among homeless persons puts them at greater risk of committing law-breaking through arrests for possession of drugs, selling drugs, and public intoxication (Greenberg and Rosenheck, 2008). Individuals with prior incarceration history are at ten time's greater risk of beingness incarcerated than individuals with no incarceration history. Moreover, individuals with co-occurring SUDs and mental disorder had five times greater adventure of incarceration when compared to individuals without co-occurring mental disorders. Compared with younger individuals (ages 18–29), individuals between 45 and 64 were less likely to be incarcerated and people 65 and older were unlikely to be incarcerated. Approximately 26.5% of incarcerated people were reincarcerated inside a year (Hawthorne et al., 2012).

The toll of incarcerating persons involved in substance-related crimes has increased considerably over the past two decades in the U.Southward. The annual country prison house costs take more than doubled between 1986 and 2001, from $49 per resident to $104 per resident (Stephan, 2004). This increase in cost was due to the rising in the number of persons incarcerated for substance offenses and crimes relating to the possession and distribution of illicit drugs. Substance offenders are the fastest increasing section of inmates in the U.South. state prison organization (Harrison and Beck, 2005). In 1983, 12 adults entered prison house on a drug law-breaking for every 100,000 adults in the population. By 1998, this rate had increased more than sevenfold to 88 per 100,000 adults (Iguchi et al., 2005). Between 1980 and 2002, the number of persons in U.S. land prisons for substance offenses increased from xix,000 to 265,000 (Slade et al., 2008). This increment in costs has affected the economic arrangement considerably and should drive society to focus on preventing the escalation of substance-related crimes.

According to 2010 National Survey on Drug Utilise and Health (NSDUH) report, 20.3 million adults had substance abuse disorder. I in eight Americans have pregnant problems with drugs or alcohol and 45% have co-occurring mood or anxiety disorders (Substance Abuse and Mental Wellness Services Administration, 2012). The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimated that drug abuse costs were $180 billion in 2002. Drug related crimes cost $107 billion and $15.8 billion was spent on drug abuse treatment. Economic costs of untreated substance abuse and annual total societal cost of substance abuse in the U.South. is approximately $510.eight billion in 1999 (Harwood, 2000).

Booze is the most commonly driveling drug, followed by marijuana, stimulants, and cocaine. Alcohol and drug abuse can adversely influence melancholia stability, cognition, and behavior among persons with mental illness (Sherwood Chocolate-brown et al., 2001). Alcohol abuse has furnishings on the boyish brain; it impairs neuroplasticity, decreases problem solving, exact and non-verbal retrieval, and visuospatial skills. Damage to the frontal limbic organization causes "blunted emotional reactivity." The worldwide prevalence of booze use disorders in adults was approximately i.7%, and was more than than 5% in North America (Chalub and Telles, 2006.)

Substance abuse or dependence results in impairments of executive office such equally decision making, forethought and impulse command, and after increases an individual's propensity to participate in criminal acts (Anthony and Forman, 2003). Moreover, the onset of a SUD makes the individual more than prone to polysubstance use (Newcomb et al., 2001; Ellickson et al., 2004). Polysubstance corruption is associated with impulse command problems (Cunningham, 2004), selling drugs, and other crimes (Nurco, 1998).

Research studies showed a direct correlation betwixt substance abuse and law-breaking in adolescent and early adulthood (Nurco, 1998; Gordon et al., 2004). The majority of violent acts involve alcohol, drug use, or both (Chalub and Telles, 2006). Heavy utilize of alcohol and marijuana in adolescence is positively correlated with criminal offence (Fergusson and Horwood, 2000; Fergusson et al., 2002). Force per unit area from peers and family members, violent associates, fewer employment opportunities, lack of prophylactic housing, and the stress of probation atmospheric condition volition bear upon the life of released offenders.

African Americans constituted over 85% of people sentenced for cocaine violations, although they found less than 15% of all cleft users (Mauer, 2004). Black or African American adolescents accept lower rates of substance utilize than white adolescents. Family unit attitudes and behaviors that discourage drug use may contribute to low rates of drug use among blackness youths (Vega and Gil, 2009). Co-ordinate to 2010 NSDUH study, every bit compared with the national average for adolescents anile 12–17, black adolescents had lower rates of cigarette apply (5.eight vs. 10.2%), booze use (10.5 vs. xvi.0%), marijuana apply (six.5 vs. 6.nine%), and non-medical use of prescription type drugs (2.nine vs. 3.3%). Yet, the recent increase in marijuana use and the non-medical apply of prescription type drugs amidst black adolescents highlight the need for handling programs and prevention strategies (Substance Abuse and Mental Wellness Services Administration and Center for Behavioral Wellness Statistics and Quality, 2011).

Factors such every bit depression self-esteem, depression family unit pride, deviant peer associations, family history of drug or booze corruption, and drug dealing increase the chances of substance abuse in African Americans (Rodney et al., 1996; Harvey and Coleman, 1997; Centers and Weist, 1998). A study past Slade et al. using propensity score matching techniques explored the association of onset of SUDs with the take a chance of criminal incarceration among a accomplice of young men (ages xviii–24). The young men were predominantly from lower income, urban, African American households. Slade reported that onset of SUD by age xvi is associated with a higher rate of criminal incarceration for substance-related offenses. The study also noted higher incarceration costs in early on adulthood, with a higher charge per unit of criminal arrests and prosecutions. Young men with SUDs beginning at age 16 take an approximately fourfold greater probability (0.35 vs. 0.09) of incarceration for substance-related offenses by early on adulthood (Slade et al., 2008). Multidimensional family therapy (MDFT), functional family therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have been shown to be benign in treating substance abuse adolescents (Waldron and Turner, 2008).

Although minorities incorporate 34% of the total population nether 17 years of historic period in U.S., they establish 62% of those charged in juvenile court. This disparity is too axiomatic in rates of juvenile detention, where African American youths are detained five times and Hispanics two and a half times more often than Caucasian youths (Desai et al., 2006). African Americans are 14% of the U.S. population, however they institute 28% of arrests, 40% of inmates held in prisons and jails, and 42% of the population on death row. Hispanics and Native Americans are also alarmingly overrepresented in the criminal justice organization (U.S. Census, 2008; Harrison and Beck, 2006; Snell, 2007). This overrepresentation of people of color in the nation'south criminal justice system, besides referred to every bit Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), is a serious issue in our society (Hartney and Vuong, 2009).

The high rate of incarceration in U.S. may adversely affect health care, the economy of the country and will become a burden on lodge. In addition, the people already had poorer health outcomes, so continued expansion of jails and prisons farther exacerbate the disparities amidst blacks, Latinos, and whites. The chances of reoffending would be decreased by increasing the awareness of substance-related outcomes amongst drug offenders. Improving the effectiveness of health intendance programs in correctional facilities and helping the offenders to reintegrate into their communities after release, will certainly subtract chances of reoffending. This in plough will decrease social problems, violence, and relieve lot of money for the authorities (Freudenberg, 2001).

Conclusion

In this article, we sought to highlight the clan between substance abuse and incarceration among African American males. Disproportionate rate of incarceration of African Americans leads to socioeconomic problems, mental health and behavioral disorders, substance abuse, and take a chance for HIV/AIDS (Freudenberg et al., 2005). The reduction of health disparities in correctional facilities particularly in substance corruption, mental health, and HIV/AIDS will reduce rates of recidivism and ultimately improve the wellness of people (Hatcher et al., 2009).

Early substance abuse has a significant upshot and leads to greater involvement with the criminal justice organisation. African Americans have college abstinence rates than the general population, but experience a disproportionate degree of health consequences related to addiction and significant disparities in drug related incarcerations. Proper implementation of expert mental health care during and after incarceration will help to decrease the chances of reoffending. The treatment of incarcerated individuals with addictions tin can greatly improve health and societal outcomes. Factors like encouraging education for juveniles and parents, engaging in church and extracurricular activities, increasing awareness, enhancing connectedness through mentorship, coping skills, and support network will help to preclude substance abuse and incarceration amid African Americans.

Addiction is a circuitous but treatable disease that affects brain function and behavior. No single treatment is appropriate for anybody. Handling needs to be readily available. Effectiveness of handling depends on needs of the individual, not just his or her drug abuse. An individual remaining in the handling for an adequate menstruum of fourth dimension is critical. Private or group and behavioral therapies like CBT and motivational interviewing are the nearly common forms of drug abuse treatment (Quello et al., 2005). The treatment of SUDs will be effective with integration of meditation and traditional CBT strategies past increasing awareness of sensations, such every bit peckish, emotional states, and physiological arousal (Marlatt, 2002).

Medications are an important element of treatment for many patients, especially when combined with counseling and other behavioral therapies. Equally many drug-addicted individuals have other mental disorders, medically assisted detoxification is merely the first stage of habit handling and by itself does piffling to modify long-term drug abuse. An private's treatment and service program must exist assessed continually and modified as necessary to ensure that it meets his or her changing needs. Treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective. Drug use during treatment must be monitored continuously, every bit lapses may occur during handling. Therapeutic community programs with prison-based and specialized treatment facilities, CBT treatment for 91–180 days, and 12-step orientation with staff specialized in substance abuse tin can be helpful (Grella et al., 2007).

In conclusion, it is essential for health care professionals to increase public awareness of substance abuse and find ways to decrease the loftier rates of incarceration past focusing on modifiable risk factors. Spending money on prevention and intervention of substance abuse treatment programs volition yield ameliorate results than spending on correctional facilities. This will help to improve the quality of life especially among African Americans. Furthermore, the vast sum of money saved by the state and local governments tin can exist utilized for the well-being of society. The incarceration of African Americans in U.S. is high and is tied with drug use. With effective treatment of SUDs and alternatives to prison will save the United states of america significantly in economic terms.

Conflict of Involvement Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or fiscal relationships that could be construed equally a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Ms. Amelia Whitehead for reviewing the commodity and had no disclosures.

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