>>SOUTHERN INDIANA — There is a scene in the “Apollo 13” movie after the space capsule’s oxygen tank explodes, when the man in charge at Mission Control tells his people “Work the problem. Don’t make it any worse.” Or at least, words to that effect.

Good advice; perhaps we should take it.

The United States contains 5 percent of the world’s population…and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. We have the largest prison population per capita in the entire world, with more than 2.3 million people behind bars. It’s a problem…and it’s getting worse.

Most of the people sitting in our prisons and jails are there for substance abuse-related offenses. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s 2008 Adam II Report, more than 80 percent of arrestees were under the influence of at least one substance at the time of their arrest.

That’s a problem. In more than 16 years, I cannot recall meeting a single inmate in any prison or jail I visited anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, whose crime had absolutely nothing to do with drugs or alcohol. I’m sure they are out there; I just never encountered one.

Ask any criminal justice system professional, and they will tell you the same thing; that most of the people in our correctional system are serving time for offenses committed while under the influence of alcohol, abusing or selling drugs, or for committing other crimes so that they could obtain drugs or alcohol.

It is widely believed that drug and alcohol addiction is a disease. If that is true, then allow me to ask an obvious question; if substance abuse is a disease, then why are we punishing people because they have contracted it? If addiction is a disease, then shouldn’t we treat it as we do other diseases?

We treat people with physical ailments such as diabetes, or with mental health issues such as going into full-time prison ministry. Why then are we not diagnosing and treating people with substance abuse diseases before they start breaking the law?

Perhaps it is because deep down, we do not really believe that it is a disease? I have heard it said that calling it a disease removes the “stigma” of treating it like a moral failure. Perhaps addiction is a condition that acts like a disease, but isn’t?

I have been clean and sober with the Lord’s help for more than 30 years. I share this with you so you’ll understand that I have personally traveled the road from addiction to recovery to full freedom, and have helped many others find the way to their own freedom. I have learned things they don’t teach in the textbooks about what motivates addiction, and what it takes to get free; not merely from my own experience, but from the experience of many others, including friends who died without achieving long-term sobriety.

It may be necessary for recovering addicts to believe that they have a disease in order to get clean and sober (it was for me), but at some point, we have to admit that not only are we powerless over our drug of choice, but we are also responsible for the choices we make. Until we make such an admission, we may be able to maintain a substance abuse free lifestyle … but we will not really be free.

For many of us former addicts and alcoholics, real freedom began when we stopped making excuses for our bad behavior, stopped blaming people, places, and things for our miserable condition, and admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being that no one forced us to drink that first drink, smoke that first joint, or drop that first tab of acid. It was our decision to make, and we made it. It may have become a disease at the point we became addicts, but the point is, we became addicts of our own free will. We believed the all-too-common lie that addiction happens to other people, but not to us.

Whether you believe that addiction is a disease or not, we must decide that if we are serious about reducing our prison and jail populations, then we ought to focus our attention and resources on the largest part of the problem…the vast majority of incarcerated offenders who are serving time for non-violent, substance abuse related crimes.

For starters, we could do a better job of classifying defendants as high, medium, or low risk as they enter the system, and separate them according to classification. Violence-prone predators are often put in the same prisons with non-violent offenders, who either become victims or predators themselves. A lack of space makes it difficult to end this practice immediately, but if we start making greater use of alternative sentencing options that include treatment for addiction, more prison space will be freed up to house violent criminals. In most cases, it costs less to treat an addict than it does to lock up an addict.

We are very good at making public policy based on the smallest part of the challenges we face. For example, our policy on how we deal with sex offenders is based on approximately 15 percent of the problem, and virtually ignores the other 85 percent. Our policy on corrections in general seems to be based on what is appropriate for a relative minority of offenders, while not doing nearly enough to work the bulk of the problem.

We’re not going to solve our alcohol and drug related crime problem with just one opinion column…but perhaps we could begin to work toward a public policy that reduces it, one changed life at a time. I’ll have more to explore with you next week.

Johnson is executive director of Christian Formation Ministries. His organization has numerous volunteer opportunities available.           For information, e-mail richard@christian-formation.org, or call 812-945-0886.