LAWMAKERS RETHINK DRUG WAR

Shifting focus to treatment would save tax dollars, Maleng contends

OLYMPIA -- A decade after cracking down on drug crime, Washington lawmakers
are rethinking their "war on drugs" and may shorten some prison terms in
exchange for mandatory drug treatment.

On Monday, a parade of "law and order" leaders, including King County
Prosecutor Norm Maleng, told House and Senate committees that millions could
be saved by trimming prison sentences. Some of the savings could finance
drug treatment to break inmates' cycle of addiction, they said.

"It is time to move our drug policy in a new direction ... to renew a
commitment to treatment," Maleng told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I
believe we can have a drug policy that is more effective, more balanced and
more fair."

His plan, sponsored in the Senate by Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, would trim
six months from the current 21- to 27-month minimum sentence for first-time,
nonviolent offenders charged with manufacture or delivery of cocaine or
heroin.

Maleng, one of the state's most prominent Republicans, also supports a 31-
to 41-month sentencing range for defendants convicted of their fourth drug
offense, instead of the 1989 law's 10-year penalty.

The legislation, Senate Bill 5419, would transfer the estimated savings
during the coming year, $2.4 million, into a treatment fund administered by
the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse.

Over the years, the savings to the prison system -- and the appropriation to
the treatment fund -- would soar to $16 million in the fiscal year beginning
in July 2006.

House and Senate budget leaders, in separate interviews earlier, said such
legislation would be a boon to the state budget writers in future decades by
restraining growth of the state prison population, saving the great expense
of building and operating new prisons.

The change wouldn't help in the drafting of the new two-year state budget,
because there would be lag time before the earlier releases start lowering
the inmate population, said Senate budget Chairwoman Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.

However, Patterson, Maleng and other supporters used a policy argument, not
the financing savings, to tout the change. Maleng, who helped push through
the doubling of prison terms for drug offenses in 1989, said that was the
right strategy at the time, but that it's time to swing the pendulum back
more to the treatment side.

About 3,000 inmates are behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses, at an
average annual cost to taxpayers of $21,000 apiece, Patterson she said.

"And what are we getting for that $63 million? Not much," she said.

Simply warehousing offenders and then returning them to the streets,
untreated and unchanged, does little long-term good, Patterson said.

For between $2,000 and $3,000, the state can provide intensive treatment,
possibly breaking the "incredibly nonproductive cycle of huge investment
that yields negative return," she said.