A New Approach to Drug Crime

California’s crackdown on crime, symbolized by the passage of the three-strikes law in 1994, is sending a message, and the rates of major crimes have fallen to levels not seen since the late 1960s. That message, however, seems lost on the state’s teeming numbers of drug and alcohol abusers.

A record 100,000 inmates of California’s state prisons have histories of chronic drug or alcohol use. Projections say that within three years incarceration of drug-related prisoners will cost taxpayers $500 million to $1 billion annually.

The need to control these soaring costs has forged a unique alliance between many of the state’s conservative and liberal leaders, who are rallying for expansion of intensive substance abuse programs in prisons. Meeting in supervised groups, convicts explore themes like male-female relationships, family problems, trust and inner rage. These may sound like issues for your neighborhood psychologist, but many of the hard men and women in California’s prisons are there because they couldn’t handle common problems.

A growing body of research shows that such programs effectively reduce recidivism rates. A recent study by the National Development and Research Institute, for instance, found that within two years after being released from prison, 65% of untreated substance-abusing convicts were rearrested, compared to only 16% of convicts treated in an intensive substance abuse program.

That and other success stories should lead the state Senate to pass SB 1089, a bill that would enable California to expand intensive substance abuse programs, now established in only three of its facilities, throughout all 32 state prisons. The alternative is far costlier: a situation wherein tens of thousands of addicts check in and out of prisons every year, a cycle that effective substance abuse programs can stop.

Courts working with state and county officials also could impose more intermediate punishments at the time of sentencing for those who are more a danger to themselves than to society. A second bill pending before the state Senate, SB 295, would give counties more money to establish such programs. A model could be the thoughtful “Community-based Punishment Options Plan” devised last year by San Diego County Sheriff William B. Kolender, which would impose punishments short of imprisonment and then assess their efficacy in a way that promises to save money while protecting public safety.

It’s time to realize that far from coddling criminals, intermediate punishments and prison substance abuse programs can help reduce crime, saving California taxpayers billions of dollars in the process.