STUDY FINDS MUCH LOWER RECIDIVISM IN SHASTA PROGRAM

A review of Shasta County's 6-year-old diversion program for
substance-abusing criminals shows that people who go through the program
are significantly less likely than other offenders to get back into trouble.

A study done for the Shasta County Superior Court found that graduates of
what is often referred to as "drug court" commit fewer parole violations
and are one-seventh as likely to go to state prison as are others with
drug-related convictions.

Superior Court Judge James Ruggiero hailed the findings as proof that the
Addicted Offender Program he started in January 1995 is nudging addicts
into recovery and making the community safer.

"I think it confirms what we believed was occurring, but until you have the
numbers, you don't know if it's just intuitive," said Ruggiero, who stepped
down as the program's overseeing judge at the end of December. "I had also
done statistics that the court kept. I felt . . . if we have an outsider
take a look at it, we'll get an honest assessment."

The Addicted Offender Program takes people who have already been convicted
of a nonviolent, drug-or alcohol-related felony and assigns them treatment,
probation and other penalties in lieu of a prison sentence.

The report was compiled by Simpson College professor Carol Whitmer and
county probation officer Jim Kuhn, who compared groups of 45 program
graduates with 45 other offenders who did not go through the program.

The two found that program graduates were given drug tests five times more
often than the other offenders, but the others recorded nearly as many
"dirty" tests. The graduates committed 32 parole violations compared with
104 for the other group, and only four of the program participants ended up
in state prison compared with 27 - or 59 percent - of the other offenders.

Whitmer and Kuhn found program graduates committed nine new offenses - five
of them felonies - compared with 37 new crimes committed by the others.

"This lower recidivism rate for the AOP group was a particularly profound
finding," the two concluded.

Ruggiero began the program after learning about the drug court concept at a
judges' conference in 1994, he said. Such courts were rare six years ago
but are now in many California counties.

The judge said he and other legal professionals are still waiting to see
the impact from the November passage of Proposition 36, which requires
treatment rather than jail for nonviolent offenders convicted of drug
possession.

Ruggiero said the Addicted Offender Program may lose some enrollees to the
Proposition 36 treatment program, but he said the AOP, which is more
intensive, may deal with more serious offenses.

Either way, the result will be that more lives may change.

"The impact of the program is significant on a variety of levels, and most
significant is the impact on the individual - the change in their lives -
and the resulting impact it has on their children, families and friends,"
Ruggiero said.

"Flowing from that," he said, "is the incredible savings for society in
terms of decreased crime, not having to provide them with the welfare
system because of people getting employed, not paying for costs of
incarceration and not having to support children in Children's Protective
Services or foster care."