Removing Barriers: Community Partnering for Innovative Solutions to the Opioid Crisis

• In Event: 2151 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Roundtable
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Critical Analyses of Responses to Drug Use

Abstract

This study targets no cost legal resources to those seeking treatment from substance use disorders. It collaborates with drug and sobriety specialty courts, a tech start-up, a law school, and two treatment centers to conduct and evaluate the intervention. Echoing Desmond and Western (2018), poverty is much more than a matter of economics. It is, instead, multidimensional and a matter of “justice.” For Americans trying to get on their feet, in fact, material deprivation often intersects with addiction, inability to obtain stable housing or employment, and encounters with the criminal justice system (Desmond, 2016; Leblanc, 2004; Western, 2018). The current project, building on several pertinent literatures on stratification, work, criminology, and law and society, will gather and analyze unique data pertaining to poverty, substance use, employment, and encounters with the courts, and in a manner that will help identify pathways to success, stumbling blocks and potential policy interventions that may partially remedy the vicious cycle identified in prior work. The focus is cross-cutting relative to multiple specialty areas of our discipline and the data are rich. I correspondingly envision several important contributions across multiple literatures in the field as well as key policy insights and recommendations regarding institutional interventions at several key junctures.

Authors

• Meghan M. O'Neil, University of Michigan

• JJ Prescott, University of Michigan