FORGET THE EXTREMES. TRY A DOSE OF BOTH

Since last November's elections, it has seemed like the forces arguing for
a shift in American drug policy from punishment to treatment were gaining
significant ground.

The notoriously harsh three-strikes-and-you're-out voters of California
agreed to a ballot initiative that steers first-time nonviolent drug
offenders into treatment rather than jail. The tough-on-crime governor of
New York called for shortening prison sentences for drug offenders, and his
fellow Republican governor of New Mexico is pushing decriminalization of
marijuana.

Meanwhile, the sad odysseys of celebrity cocaine addicts Robert Downey Jr.
and Darryl Strawberry are putting a sympathetic face on addiction, and the
hit movie "Traffic" and the mistaken shoot-down of a missionary plane over
Peru appear to be stirring a wave of public discontent with the nation's
protracted war on drugs.

Now come reports that President Bush will retreat from these developments
and appoint veteran drug warrior John P. Walters to be the next drug czar.
Walters is a sworn skeptic of drug treatment and a chief architect of U.S.
drug interdiction strategy.

So the great drug war debate lingers, stalemated between two sets of
extremes -- punishment versus treatment, and supply versus demand.

Now, as before, neither side has it right.

Hundreds of thousands of criminal drug addicts cannot safely be spared
prison and put into our nation's already overwhelmed community treatment
and probation programs.

Nor can we incarcerate or intercept our way out of the problem.

Though the politics seem paralyzed, there is a budding consensus among drug
policy experts and professionals in the field on a strategy that can both
work and be sold to the public.

The strategy would retire the worn-out treatment versus incarceration
debate in favor of a political and policy middle ground -- not just a
"balance" in emphasis on supply and demand, but a much more subtle and
sophisticated blending of the two philosophies.

What's required is a system that might be called "managed punishment."
Rather than being locked up and warehoused, or cut loose and told to show
up for treatment, drug-addicted offenders, whether convicted of a violent
crime or mere possession, need finely tuned doses of treatment and
punishment at the same time.

Such a system would deliver the right mix ofthe two approaches to
individual addicts on a massive scale.

To make that possible, probation officers would need administrative
authority to move offenders quickly up and down the various levels of
custody -- from low-intensity probation to home detention to progressively
increasing numbers of days in jail -- based on the results of frequent drug
tests, attendance at counseling sessions and compliance with other terms of
supervision. Drug treatment would have to be provided every step of the way.

The key to the system would be a rational and certain set of penalties and
rewards spelled out in advance.

Each and every time an offender broke the rules, he would face a
predictable, immediate and proportionate response.

No judge shopping, no excuses for getting high, no six-month delays waiting
for a violation hearing in court.

This might seem like common sense, but it is a dramatic departure from
current practice around the country.

There are now nearly 5 million Americans on probation or parole,
outnumbering prisoners by more than three-to-one. These offenders are out
in our neighborhoods, not behind bars, and account for the bulk of
drug-related violence and theft.

In fact, drug-addicted offenders under supervision in the community have
been estimated by leading drug policy expert Mark Kleiman to use an
astounding 50 percent of all the cocaine consumed in the United States. Yet
the focus has been on providing drug treatment to prison inmates, rather
than to this far more immediate threat.

As a result, the vast majority of drug-addicted offenders released to
community supervision -- whether assigned to probation by a judge or let
out of prison by a parole board -- don't get a treatment slot and don't get
tested for drug use on a regular basis.

Even when they do get treatment and testing, their probation officers don't
have the ability to impose any consequences for skipped treatment or failed
tests. Sometimes, an officer will get fed up with persistent violations and
bring the offender to court, where the judgewill either slap him on the
wrist and give him another chance or send him to prison to serve out his
full sentence.

It's an all-or-nothing proposition that runs counter to everything we have
learned about how to help people change their behavior.

A growing number of "drug treatment courts," including several juvenile and
adult operations in the District, Maryland and Virginia, provide close
judicial oversight of probationers in treatment and have proven that the
concept can work. Some of the better ones, such as the adult court in the
District, can cut re-arrest rates in half. But because most drug courts
restrict eligibility to lower-level offenders, they achieve a dangerous
paradox: The more hardened offenders go through the regular probation
system, where they get less supervision, and less-intensive testing and
treatment.

More specialty courts and "alternatives to incarceration" programs are
being planned at the local level, with some federal and state help. But
they still will handle only a tiny fraction of the 5 million offenders now
under state and federal legal supervision, and cannot absorb a crush of new
clients that treatment advocates want to divert from prison.

We will not dig out of the drug war debate or reduce drug-related crime to
an acceptable level until we move beyond these small pilot programs and
overhaul the basic way the nation's community supervision and drug
treatment agencies do their jobs.

We need many more treatment slots and probation officers, to be sure. But
expanding capacity is not nearly enough.

Managed punishment requires that drug treatment programsbe organized into
true local systems that direct addicts into the right slots for their
individual needs, move clients quickly between programs as their addictions
improve or worsen, and plug in related services such as mental health
treatment, job training and housing assistance. Insurance must be required
to cover more than a meager 10 counseling sessions.

The performance of individual programs must be tracked and statistically
compared so the best can be rewarded and the worst weeded out.

Probation departments, for their part, must take advantage of advanced
technologies that provide fast and accurate drug tests, track offenders'
locations wherever they go, and share data with treatment providers and
police so they know instantaneously when someone misses treatment or gets
arrested.

And probation officers, like community police, must get out from behind
their desks and build reliable sources of information in their community.

Most critically, treatment and probation staffs must present a united front
to offenders.

Both professions must send the message that while relapse may be part of
recovery, offenders cannot return to drug use without ramifications.

Because we know that addicts commit far fewer crimes while engaged in
treatment, targeting drug-addicted offenders with a system of managed
punishment would make a bigger, faster dent in the drug and crime problem
than any other single strategy.

It would be cheaper than the increased incarceration and interdiction
that's already planned.

It would be aggressive without bursting prisons or infringing on civil
liberties. It would be compassionate without allowing de facto amnesty for
junkies who break into homes -- and whose first sensational crime would
simply swing the incarceration versus treatment debate back the other
way.The middle ground of managed punishment is where we have the best
chance of helping addicts and protecting our communities from the ravages
of illegal drugs.