What do Incarceration and Antibiotics have in common?

In America, at least, both are historically overprescribed, and changes in regimen are overdue.

I remember, growing up in the eighties, how antibiotics were given out almost like candy if a person even sneezed funny.
As an aside, I didn't get a lot of this: my father, the old man from the twenties that he was, was more likely to prescribe a shot of moonshine or Yukon Jack to little six-year-old me if I was noticeably ill. It would knock me flat on my posterior, and I would sleep like a bump on a log for half a day, but when I got up? I was mostly well again.
In the early 2000s, the antibiotics scare really began. We're developing resistance to antibiotics; antibiotics are developing resistances to our drugs; prescribe fewer of these, and humans need to tough out some of these bugs.

Funny thing is, in the nineties, we started overprescribing jail and prison sentences through the Truth in Sentencing Act that my memory recalls then-President Bill Clinton signing into law, along with the cuts to Pell Grants for the incarcerated. After all, gotta make sure that people stay gone from the world as long as possible, come back with no current relevant skills, and go back into prison as soon as inhumanly possible. We also turned up the stigmas associated with people who have had lengthy prison stays, making it harder for returners who have felt the gavel of justice to move forward: gaps in employment that can only be explained by prison time are a poor look to people who still skill the old way.

How do we grow past this?

I am reasonably certain that, with adaptation, we can move forward both in medicine, and in managing our punishments for those who have truly committed wrongs against others. Just as we no longer prescribe amoxicillin as the instant go-to for someone with a head cold just because they think it might get worse, prescribing 30 years of prison to a man for breaking into an unoccupied dwelling to take clothes and a little cash to feed himself just because they think it might get worse should go away. There is often a reason; are we asking to help or offering aid? Or are we stacking people in warehouses for decades?

That 30 year scenario, by the way, is real. Very real. At one point, I was housed with a gentleman whose sentence (as verified on paper by the author) was for breaking into an unoccupied dwelling. He had a prior charge for the same thing in another state, but let's evaluate: why was he doing this? He did not have any trade skills, he told me. Getting work is hard when you don't have anything that draws a prospective employer into wanting you for more than menial tasks.

Training as a Diversion

We should offer training as an option that steers people away from the human warehousing. When you give a person something they can build upon, you start their agency, their empowerment. You tell them, then show them, they are not worth less.

Treatment as a Diversion

Drug, Alcohol, and Mental Health issues are frequently "treated" with a trip to the local jail or prison. There has been a lack of services that focus on treating these issues, but if we spent a fraction of the funds we spend on imprisonment on giving people access to the treatments they may be seeking, that would vent some of the prison warehousing to atmosphere.

Technology as a Diversion

In the free world, we already wear a tether or two in a voluntary manner. Look at your phones, your smart watches, and tell me it isn't true. :) For some who are here because it is neither a training nor treatment issue, geofencing with a tracker should be a more presented option. I think of an old gentleman who was imprisoned for trespassing at a service station; fence him to exclude his trespassed location, help him find affordable senior housing (because he was unhoused), and be of service to him instead of burying him in prison.

But I realized the reality of the situation is Florida loves its prisons, loves its tax dollars to go toward sustaining prisons, and won't pull in people that go contrary to that, much to my consternation. Ha.

Prove me wrong.