The Prison Explosion, Part 2c

DRUG TREATMENT SUCCESSES FALL SHORT OF ADVOCATES' GOALS

Alternative To Prison Advanced

From the time he was 8 or 9, growing up in Brooklyn, Sha-Kim Fitzgerald
was in trouble. He worked his way up from shoplifter to drug user to drug
addict to drug seller. Last March he was arrested on Main Street in the
City of Poughkeepsie on drug-dealing charges -- for the second time.

But this time, it turned his life around.

After three months in an intensive drug treatment program at the former
Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate Seneca County, Fitzgerald envisions a
future that doesn't include drugs, prison or dependency.

"I don't plan on being a survivor anymore," said Fitzgerald, 27. "I plan on
being successful. I do have a destiny."

Fitzgerald, who also has completed a three-month county day-treatment
program, is one success of an innovative alternative to simply sending drug
offenders to prison.

Instead of a lengthy prison term -- often 3 1/2 to 7 years -- offenders
with specified second felony convictions can opt to go to the Willard Drug
Treatment Campus for just three months, with parole supervision for the
balance of their term. Willard costs $5,600 per 90-day stay; if the inmate
took the prison option, it would cost $29,700 a year. Fitzgerald chose Willard.

Opened in 1996, the 862-bed center is part of Gov. George Pataki's effort
to "right-size" the prison system by reducing the numbers of nonviolent
drug offenders who would be better off in treatment than prison. The
proportion of nonviolent offenders hit a high of 49 percent in 1995; it has
since dropped to 47 percent.

The question, for many, is whether Willard is working. State officials say
they have no studies on the rates at which Willard participants return to
prison -- despite the belief expressed by many in the criminal justice
community that people like Fitzgerald are the exception rather than the rule.

"Since opening, Willard has not been filled with the intended inmates,"
said a report last May by the Citizens Budget Commission, a New York
City-based fiscal watchdog group. "Judges and prosecutors were reluctant to
use Willard because they felt the 90-day program was not effective or harsh
enough for second-time offenders."

Hence, Willard has been filled mainly with parole violators and has not
been successful, the report stated.

Majority back in prison

A Poughkeepsie Journal study found 57 percent of inmates who went to
Willard from Dutchess or Ulster County in 1997 returned to prison by early
2000. By contrast, the Journal found a return rate of 40 percent for local
inmates released from prison in 1995 -- two years earlier.

"You'd be surprised how many go through Willard and come back here,'' said
Dutchess County Court Judge Thomas Dolan, who nonetheless is happy to have
the program as a sentencing option. "They're just not learning anything."

Some do benefit, however.

"I have the feeling it did a significant amount of good for a number of
people,'' said former County Court Judge George Marlow, now a Supreme Court
judge.

Followup urged

"Willard is improving," said Frank Chase, an assistant district attorney
who prosecutes drug cases. "The strength of any drug program is the
aftercare and followup policy" -- which he and others said was initially
lacking.

State officials said there was discussion of lengthening the program, in
light of complaints that it was too short to have an impact.

Dutchess County District Attorney William Grady said the county has been
approached about participating in a pilot program that would involve a stay
at a residential treatment program after release from Willard in addition
to routine outpatient care.

The problem may also relate to the nature of addiction.

"People are not necessarily going to succeed the first time out, the second
time or the sixth time," said David Steinberg, Dutchess chief assistant
public defender. Many treatment programs are needed besides Willard, he
maintained, to roll back the overuse of prisons for drug offenders. "We
need to tailor sentences to the needs of the offenders."