DRUG USE AMONG PRISON INMATES AND GUARDS CONTINUES TO FALL

Tougher Policy On Employee Drug Testing Credited With Improvement.

SPRINGFIELD (AP) -- Drug use by Illinois prisoners and their guards
continues to decline.

The percentage of inmates testing positive for drug use at traditional
adult prisons has fallen to 2 percent, down from 9.5 percent in 1997,
Corrections Department figures show.

Positive tests among prison employees fell to 2.2 percent last year, down
from 3.4 percent since testing began in 1998.

Employee drug use has led to a legislative battle between prison guards and
Senate President James "Pate" Philip, R-Wood Dale.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees last
spring reluctantly agreed to a zero-tolerance drug policy for prison guards
- -- one strike and you're fired.

Philip wants to write the policy into law so that it cannot be
re-negotiated in future contracts. He said Monday that legislation
approving pension improvements that are promised in the state's new
contract, which already passed the House, won't pass the Senate until the
drug-test law does.

"It's exactly the same thing that's in the contract. All we're saying is it
should be the law," Philip said. "When you're caught with drugs in the
state of Illinois, you're convicted of a felony. We should have felons
watching felons? I don't think so."

Hundreds of AFSCME members rallied at the Capitol Monday to urge the
Legislature to act on the bill -- without putting into law the
zero-tolerance plan.

"I've always disagreed with the 'one strike.' A guy deserves at least one
other chance on that. He deserves a chance to clean up," Randy Adams,
correctional officer and union president at Shawnee Correctional Center,
said before the rally. The percentage of positive drug tests among Shawnee
guards fell from 4.7 percent in 1998 to 1 percent last year under the
three-chances plan.

Philip and Gov. George Ryan say they don't understand why the union agreed
to put the policy in the new contract but won't agree to make it law.

AFSCME executive director Henry Bayer counters that putting the policy into
law ties everyone's hands and that Philip and the other legislative leaders
agreed to the contract agreement last summer.

"A governor and a union couldn't ever negotiate over this issue, and that's
not what we agreed to, not what he (Philip) agreed to," Bayer said. "It's
not about one-strike, because we still have a one-strike policy."

Corrections Department spokesman Sergio Molina refused to say whether
Director Donald Snyder, a friend of Philip's, backs the bill. "We support
zero tolerance," he said.

Molina attributed the decline in inmate drug use to greater success in
keeping drugs from entering prisons.

"Stepped-up security measures, increased searches, drug testing, visitor
searches," Molina said. "We also do canine searches in all of our
facilities. We have established canine searches and security searches when
vehicles enter our grounds."

The percentage of testing positive jumps from 2 percent to 3.3 percent when
the 17,000 inmates of the state's juvenile and work-release centers are
included. Test results for them were not available before fiscal 2000.

The figures -- obtained from the Corrections Department under the Freedom
of Information Act -- are even higher when inmates have more access to the
outside world.

At the state's 12 adult transitional centers where inmates who are within
two years of their release date participate in work-release programs, the
number of positive drug tests in fiscal 2000 was 4.8 percent.

More than 18 percent of 2,500 juvenile center inmates tested positive for
drugs in 2000. The numbers were disproportionately high at the two places
where juvenile offenders are first received and tested, one reason the
overall figures are so high, Molina said.

The Corrections Department has been criticized over the level of drug use
by guards.

Rep. Cal Skinner, R-Crystal Lake, last winter criticized the union and
Corrections because at a third of the adult institutions, the percentage of
guards testing positive for drugs was greater than the percentage of inmates.

But Bayer argued that drug use is higher among people outside of prisons
generally, so it makes sense that guards would test positive more often
than inmates who have less access.