JERSEY CITY, N.J.—Sexually molested at 5 years old, abused by her husband, and entangled by drug abuse, Rosalie Buthea, 49, spent years in and out of jail, living on the defensive. Now she wants to start anew.
“It’s not always jail is the solution,” she said. What she needed was treatment for her addiction, and counseling to deal with her past. “These things you can’t just turn over quickly,” she said. “It takes time to heal and a lot of people don’t understand that.”
Speaking at the Monday opening of Martin’s Place, a Jersey City re-entry center for ex-convicts, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said drug addiction needs to be acknowledged as a disease and treated as a disease.
“Of course, the first thing you would say to a friend is to go get treatment, not to go to jail,” he said. “You cannot rehabilitate someone with a drug addiction if you don’t give them the counseling and the treatment that’s necessary.”
According to the data, seven out of ten convicts are addicts and two out of three ex-offenders commit a felony within three years of release. Christie said just locking people up won’t break the cycle of reoffending.
