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JOHN CARNEVALE: There are
a lot of other players
in the community
that prevention can
approach to work with
criminal justice besides law
enforcement.
Law enforcement is
very clearly one
of the first groups I think you
should go to, the most visible,
I think, the most approachable.
They do the day-to-day
law enforcement.
They're on the streets.
I think they're just the
most obvious candidate.
But let's go beyond that.
Let's talk about
the court system.
You have judges.
You have prosecutors.
You have attorneys,
defense attorneys.
But in terms of the
programs they have,
they're going to be
managing, to put it nicely,
individuals who are in custody.
These people are maybe
in detention centers.
They may be in jails.
They may be in drug courts.
But these populations are
very much at risk for drug use
when they're allowed to go
back into the community.
Prevention has a big role here.
And I think prevention
doesn't understand this,
but they can approach
some of these programs
and say, yes, people
are behind the walls,
maybe they're in
detention, maybe they're
on probation or parole.
These individuals who
are in that condition
are at great risk
for substance abuse
when they finally are freed from
the criminal justice system.
So I think prevention
folks at the local level
should be thinking a
lot about why aren't we
approaching detention?
There's a population
in there that
eventually is going
to come back out
and be part of the community.
We want them to be productive
members of the community.
We don't want them to be people
who go back to drug abuse,
or drug misuse.
So it's an opportunity
to think about the risk
and protective factors,
or models that we have
and how to apply them
to a population that's
very much known to be at risk.
And so I think that's
an opportunity.
There are programs where I think
prevention can go in and say,
we want to help
you Mr. Warden, Mr.
Person-in-Charge-of-the-Jail,
Mr. Prosecutor,
to think about what we can
do to make sure this person
doesn't show up on
your roles again.
And we can bring our
tools to bear in terms
of preventing substance abuse.
They don't want to see
that person come back
into the system again.
They don't.
And in the field
of prevention, we
don't want to see that person
go back into the system
because we're going to
do our best to make sure
that they make better
decisions, better life choices.
So we share this
common objective,
which is, we don't want people
to be part of that system.
We want them when they leave
it to leave it for good,
and to be part of the
productive community
and be productive
members of the community.
So I think taking
that shared view,
and really exploiting
it for what it really
is, it's really a shared
vision, and starting
that is the way to go.
I've seen it work.
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