PROP. 36 COULD HURT DRUG COURT

Initiative Would Require Treatment, Not Jail Time, For Many Illegal Users.

SACRAMENTO -- Helen Harberts hates Proposition 36. But Butte County's chief
probation officer has a message for her colleagues who predict passage of
the drug-reform initiative means criminal justice doom:

"You brought this on."

The proposition promising to rock the justice system might never have
gained traction, Harberts suggests, had judges, prosecutors, political
leaders and others tried harder in recent years to expand the state's
quietly successful drug court programs.

"My gosh, we found something here unlike anything I've ever seen in my
career," Harberts, a former prosecutor, said of the drug courts.

Prop. 36 is a thus far low-profile ballot measure that would send thousands
of illegal-drug users to treatment, not jail. Ahead 49% to 28% in the
latest statewide poll, the initiative would make California the nation's
largest testing ground for a dramatically different approach to addiction.

California's drug courts -- which cost $18 million a year and divert just
5% of the state's eligible addicts into treatment programs in lieu of jail
or prison -- are at the center of the debate over the initiative.

If the measure passes, drug courts could find themselves on the verge of
irrelevance, their discretion and flexibility undermined by the new law and
its $120 million annual budget.

If it loses, the courts could be in for a huge growth spurt. In the debate
over Prop. 36, state leaders who once paid drug courts scant attention are
heralding them as a sensible criminal justice reform and a proven success
worthy of greater investment.

Douglas Anglin, director of the Drug Abuse Research Center at UCLA, said
Prop. 36 has sounded "a wake-up call" to the state's political leaders. "If
it doesn't win, it's going to get the system moving in a way it should have
been years ago."

Funded by three wealthy out-of-state businessmen, including New York
financier and philanthropist George Soros, Prop. 36 would require treatment
instead of incarceration for anyone arrested for being under the influence
or in possession of illegal drugs for personal use.

Few dispute their contention that California's court-mandated drug
treatment merits expansion. But the sides are sharply divided on whether
Prop. 36 is the best way to do it.

Opponents, including the state's leading drug court judges, say the
initiative will ruin California's drug courts by limiting judges' options
for holding offenders accountable when they hit rough spots in their
treatment programs.

Supporters of the measure argue, however, that it will make drug treatment
available to thousands more addicts who currently are shuffled by courts
into ineffective diversion programs, or into jails or prisons, where drugs
are readily available.