"Jail keeps addicts off the street, but does little more than that. Drug courts, by contrast, focus on teaching addicts how to stay clean, and how to do things others take for granted: get up every morning, show up to work on time every day, pay their bills. Prison has a punitive as well as a rehabilitative aspect, and some have been cool to drug courts for that reason, seeing them as coddling criminals. But criminals will eventually return to society." (Quoted from article)