WHY NOT BUILD PROP. 36 PLANS ON A SUCCESS?

When San Bernardino County approved plans to put Proposition 36 into
action recently, an important question went almost ignored: Why isn't
the county building on what it knows already works?

Proposition 36, passed by the voters last year, mandates a program
designed to treat drug offenders rather than tossing them into jail
repeatedly. The underlying premise is sound enough - curing an addiction
makes far more sense than recurring jail sentences for the stark fact of
drug addiction. Treat the addiction and you've solved a crime problem;
put the addict in jail and you're merely taking the problem off the
streets for a while.

The obvious role model the county should be looking at is its already
functioning drug court system. Drug courts provide a specialized program
for addicts hauled in on drug-related offenses. They must agree to a
treatment program, and are put into the probation system with regular
monitoring by a whole team, including the judge. It's more than just
curing addictions, however, as the drug courts aim to help addicts turn
lifestyles and habits around and become productive citizens. The county
has six drug courts so far, with two more ready to go, and they've been
remarkably successful since they began in 1994.

So when Judge Patrick Morris, the founder of the county's drug courts,
told the Board of Supervisors the county's plans for Proposition 36 had
some problems, his comments deserved more attention than they received.

Morris argued that to deal with drug addiction successfully - the goal
of Proposition 36, remember - the courts need a specially trained team
and a program that involves close judicial monitoring of such cases.

Instead, the county plans to parcel out such cases as part of the
regular judicial caseload, to courts whose personnel may not have the
necessary training in dealing with addicts, and doesn't rely on
continuing judicial oversight other than what the law mandates.

The rationale for that is that the state didn't provide enough money to
do what Morris suggested. Money is always a concern, as the state is
renowned for not providing enough to do the job right.

But it's also true that failure to do the job right could actually cost
more time and money than following the drug court model. Would judges
rather spend a few minutes on a regular review, or take the time
required for a full court hearing after an addict jumps from the
treatment program? And what about the costs of repeated hearings and
jailings? It's as simple as prevention being cheaper than cleaning up
problems after they happen.

It's frankly baffling why the county would ignore an existing, proven
program that's ideally suited to provide a way to deal with Proposition
36. Other counties are building on the drug court idea, so why can't San
Bernardino? Certainly it's no financially worse off than many other
counties.

The risk is that the county will end up with something that doesn't
work, and the toll from that can be measured in wasted human lives. Why
reinvent the wheel, when the blueprint for it already exists?