When you hit "the bottom" you know, and jail is the last place you want to end up in that situation --to say nothing about having to then maintain a criminal record afterwards. Addicts are addicted, and like anyone who has ever suffered through such a plight the unconscious puts up a fight like none other in order to keep the body wired into the drug. You think you still want to use, but that is merely a projection of the condition, until you know you cannot use, but meanwhile cannot stop. At this point treatment can hopefully become available to the person outside of the criminal justice system.

All users want to change as soon as heroin is no longer fun and instead is used to keep from being sick.

Once a habit is developed, a desire to quit will rarely be enough. Help is absolutely necessary.

But jail is the wrong way to help.

If executed correctly, then jail is a actually good solution for heroin addicts. In jail, they can't leave to buy more junk, so they'll overcome withdrawals with a 100% success rate. The hard part is staying clean.

Heroin use was popular in the Beatnik generation. In the book Junky, William Burroughs describes how had himself jailed voluntarily. Police stations where he was living at the time had a program similar to Gloucester's where users would bring in their "works" in exchange for a 21-day lockup without charges.

> If executed correctly

In that case, it would exclude using a jail for a health care issue. You could apply the same logic to helping people lose weight.

> You could apply the same logic to helping people lose weight.

Indeed you could!

Jail's intention is to correct bad habits, not to punish them.