Drug Court Program in NJ Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Drug Court Program in NJ - Term Paper Example The thesis statement which has been used in this paper is that: There is an immediate need to expand the drug court programs and the expansion should be in terms of program structure, underlying ideas, the area of jurisdiction, and manpower. The existing Drug Court Program, though very well structured, has not been very successful. The program started in 1996-97 and by 1999, it got well structured and the number of such courts reached 472 (Franco 2010 p.5). Drug courts started a societal shift toward therapeutic jurisprudence. The focus moved to the person rather than the crime. Frequent personal interactions with the professionals of the drug court team have helped people to recover to some extent. Though the program created more productive people for the society, in creating a healthy society it has not been very successful. In the year 2010-11, the percentage of employed people entering the program is 29%. Upon graduating the number rose to 84% (New Jersey Courts, 2011, p. 24). Now there can be some discrepancies in those numbers. The real scenario can be seen from the health benefits data. Upon entering the program, 15% of the people were considered healthy; but while graduating, only 48% of the people were labeled a s healthy. Though 33% rise is very attractive, the percentage of unhealthy people is quite substantial at 52% (New Jersey Courts, 2011, p.24). This staggering percentage is a clear indicator of the fact that the program, though very rigorous, is not very effective to create people of sound mind and body. It seems like a short time fix which is more evident from the 2009-10 annual report. Here the health benefits increased from 17% to 53% upon graduating (New Jersey Courts, 2010, p.20).

FEMINISM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

FEMINISM - Essay Example is exchange of opinions, but one of the essential parts of this process is also the presence of a certain party that is willing to articulate its position. In other words, speaking for others substitutes the real representatives and has a negative impact on the interaction. There are several elements of the above mentioned process that were addressed in the essay in question. The first on is epistemic location. Alcoff suggests that it is crucial to fully understand the location of a person within the social environment in order to determine whether one is able to be a valid representative of ideas (7). In other words, what a person says might not fully reflect the real state of affairs and, therefore, this kind of information is able to contribute to distortion of the general picture, contributing to development of misunderstanding that inevitably leads to a conflict. What is more important is that the information that is being said by a person with epistemic location that does not give one credentials to do so can hardly be received as truth. Thus, it is highly doubtful that a person who does not belong to a group is able to articulate its views in a correct manner, reflecting all the peculiarities of the position that is taken by it. Another important element of the process of speaking for others is the negative impact that this practice has on the group of people that is being represented. Indeed, on the one hand, this process simply contributing to reinforcing the oppression of this group since it shows that the people are not able to speaking for themselves which enhances the weak image of this group. On the other hand, surprisingly enough, but speaking for other actually silences this group of people, not allowing them to express the ideas that they have in a manner that they would like to use (26). This means that these people are deliberately excluded of the dialogue which harms the way they are represented in the society. As once can easily see,