Should Defendants Be Forced to Take a Drug Test?

The issue of pre-trial drug testing is under fire. There are of course some advocates who feel strongly that forced drug testing is important to our judicial system. On the other side there are advocates for the rights we want to maintain, primarily our privacy and confidentiality. Within the essay, I will briefly discuss the history of implementation and of course my view on the subject of mandatory drug testing.

In December of 1995, President Bill Clinton directed that a universal pretrial drug testing policy should be implemented. President Clinton’s reasoning behind this policy was based on the ideation that “too often” “the same criminal drug users’ cycle through the court, corrections, and probation systems still hooked on drugs and still committing crimes to support their habit.”(U.S.Dept. Of Justice, 1999) President Clinton increased funding by 25 million dollars to encourage state and local jurisdictions to participate in the support of mandated drug testing. The agreement was made between the federal courts in which the policy was adopted on the state level by 24 of the 94 federal districts. (U.S. Dept. Of Justice)

Pretrial drug testing is based upon “assumption”, according to the text America’s Courts and The Criminal Justice System. When I discuss assumptions, they can be defined better as well calculated guesses. The first aspect is the “knowledge” of the defendants drug use at the time of arrest. From this point, depending on the results of the drug test it may indicate possible misconduct at pretrial. The second aspect of the policy is that the monitoring which is used during the pretrial periods can be used with “sanctions” which will hopefully deter pretrial misconduct. (America’s Courts and Criminal Justice System).

I feel that at this time mandated drug tests are not effective. This is of course is my personal opinion. It would seem that if this policy were making headway that there would not be such a large rate of recidivism. It takes more than sending a person to prison to break them of their habits. The means which are necessary to aid in the cause of ending a drug habit are not available with this policy. The one aspect that this policy does offer is incriminating evidence to be used against the defendant in the court of law.

Under the Bill Of rights, the four rights that this policy violates are as follows:

1)Right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty
2)Right against unreasonable searches & seizures
3)Right against self-incrimination
4)Right to be treated the same as others

(What is criminal Justice?)

The reason that this policy is a violation is because all persons are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. This also ties into the right against self incrimination. Now while the policy does state that refusal of taking a drug test does not allow for detention, this does not mean that it won’t place reasonable doubt into the mind of the prosecutors, and courts, as to the validity of the person’s innocence. (Americas Courts)The right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is also a violation. It is in fact a violation of person’s rights to be forced to take a drug test, and have the results revealed to everyone before the case has even been presented to a court. The final violation is the right to be treated the same as others. I would like to know how forcing a suspected drug user to take a drug test treating them the same as other people. The other concern is how do we know that the average Joe entering the court room is not high on drugs? Apparently we won’t know unless we enforce mandatory drug testing for all defendants on all levels. This sounds ludicrous because that is exactly what this policy is. The text continues on to mention the fact that this policy has not worked. It also stated that in fact the best “predictor” was actually the number of “prior arrests, and not drug use.”

To me it seems pointless to continue a program that is clearly not working. While we continue to allow our rights as citizens to be infringed upon, it would seem that something could be done to disengage a policy such as this one. The question remains as to why this policy is allowed to continue when it so blatantly violates our rights.

References:
U.S Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance Bulletin
Retrieved: October 18, 2004 on the World Wide Web @ http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/176341.pdf
Neubauer, D. (20020 America’s Courts and the Criminal Justice System Wadsworth/Thomson, Pp. 143-144
What is Criminal Justice? Retrieved October 17, 2004 on the World Wide Web @
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/111/111lect01.htm