Congressional lawmakers and presidential candidates are currently debating criminal justice reform, offering to lessen the legal consequences for “non-violent drug offenders.” For most, the underlying motive is compassion for drug offenders, giving them the chance to avoid a criminal record. Yet such policy changes, recently made in California through the passage of Proposition 47 last November, demonstrate that these types of reforms may not be truly compassionate. Instead, fewer suffering from the disease of addiction are getting the help they need.

Current misleading charges that “mass incarceration” is largely a product of locking up petty drug offenders imagines that the courts operate primarily to punish, not to rehabilitate. Yet for those suffering from the disease of addiction, the criminal justice system has the authority and ability to provide a pathway to recovery in ways that their weary loved ones cannot.