My first Magazine Final Draft Multimodal Project 4 | Seite 17

“Prison Time for Drug Users.” Dual Diagnosis , www.dualdiagnosis.org/jail-time-drug-users/.
Experts universally concede an overcrowding problem within America’s prisons and cite
that the increased number of convictions for drug offenses largely explains this phenomenon.
Nonviolent offenders need not be housed in the prison system. The implementation of alternative
sentencing tactics has the potential to revolutionize the way we treat drug offenders. Martha
Stewart brought widespread attention to the use of electronic monitoring in 2005 as she was re-
leased from Alderson Federal Prison Camp and held captive by an ankle bracelet instead. For
Stewart and other nonviolent offenders such a sanction is a way to keep a convicted offender un-
der surveillance without the shame, cost or punitive stigma of being in prison.
Experts contend that “the rehabilitative possibilities of electronically monitored release programs
outweigh the poorly funded and inadequate prison rehabilitation programs”(De Feo 53). Oppo-
nents of alternative sentencing methods such as electronic monitoring argue that “using techno