MD. PROBATION PROGRAM IS FAILING EXPECTATIONS

On the night he allegedly gunned down a decorated Maryland state trooper,
Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay was supposed to be under the supervision of a
tough probation program that Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend cites as
her premier criminal justice initiative.

Under the program, known as Break the Cycle, Orleans-Lindsay was supposed
to attend a drug treatment program, show up for drug tests twice a week and
meet face-to-face with his probation agent twice a month. His first
violation was supposed to trigger a series of escalating punishments. His
fifth violation was supposed to send Orleans-Lindsay to jail.

But nothing worked the way it was supposed to. After 72 violations, the
23-year-old drug dealer from Silver Spring is still on the streets. He now
is the target of an intense manhunt, suspected of fatally shooting Trooper
1st Class Edward M. Toatley in the head during an undercover drug deal Oct. 30.

More than two years after the Break the Cycle program began, it is falling
far short of its goal of forcing every drug-addicted criminal to stay
drug-free, tarnishing the lieutenant governor's record as state crime czar.

Fewer than half the criminals ordered into drug treatment actually show up,
according to treatment providers. When criminals violate Break the Cycle
rules, parole and probation agents take action to punish them only a
quarter of the time, an internal audit shows. And agents rarely move to
have an offender arrested, another study of the program found.

"Most of these people are still roaming the streets, just exactly like the
guy that shot the trooper," said George McCann, executive director of the
Addict Referral and Counseling Center, one of the largest drug treatment
providers for criminals in Baltimore.

State officials "express all this concern about the state trooper getting
killed. But it'll probably happen again before this thing gets worked out,"
McCann said.

Townsend, who oversees Maryland's criminal justice system along with a
portfolio of other issues granted to her by Gov. Parris N. Glendening,
defended Break the Cycle yesterday. She said it has had great success in
reducing drug use among those criminals who attend treatment and show up
for drug testing.

Persuading agents to punish criminals who use drugs or fail to report has
proved more difficult, Townsend conceded. But state parole and probation
officials are working to correct those problems, she said.

"Ed Toatley was a great friend of mine. He was terrific, and I was deeply
troubled when I found out [his alleged killer] was under our supervision,"
Townsend said in an interview. "What happened is unacceptable. There was a
management breakdown. But you always have to distinguish between how a
program is established and set up and whether in a particular case a
particular agent made mistakes. That's what happened here."

Yesterday, state public safety officials disciplined the probation officer
responsible for Orleans-Lindsay, suspending Giselle Longchamp for 10 days.
The president of the union that represents parole and probation workers,
A.B. Bakari, vowed to appeal the action, saying the state is punishing
Longchamp for its own failure to fully staff the Silver Spring probation
office, where she handled a caseload of 200 offenders ­ nearly twice the
state average.

"Even though this agent is being used as a scapegoat, given the kind of
caseload she had, we believe she acted in an appropriate manner," Bakari said.

Moreover, Longchamp did submit a request for an arrest warrant for
Orleans-Lindsay, public safety officials said. The request was approved by
a supervisor Oct. 31, the day after Toatley was killed. A warrant was
issued Nov. 1.

Maryland is the first state in the nation to mandate intensive drug
testing, drug treatment and quick punishment as a routine part of probation
and parole for every drug-addicted criminal.

Townsend often praises Break the Cycle in speeches, touting it as a
promising innovation that "moves us past the endless debate between
treatment and punishment," as she recently told a National Press Club luncheon.

So far, about 30,000 criminals with histories of drug abuse have
participated in Break the Cycle. On any given day, approximately 9,000 of
the 55,000 men and women on probation or parole in Maryland take part in
the program.

For the first three months of supervision, offenders are supposed to show
up twice a week for drug tests. For the next three months, they must be
tested once a week. For the next six month, they must be tested monthly.
Thereafter, they must submit to random testing. All offenders are referred
to drug treatment programs, ranging from counseling to in-patient treatment.

The programs calls for offenders who test positive for drugs or fail to
report to face increasingly severe punishments, spelled out in detail in a
chart called the "Break the Cycle Sanctions Matrix" developed in each
jurisdiction.

For positive drug tests in Montgomery County, for example, an offender is
supposed to be punished with a verbal reprimand on first offense, a
reprimand from the agent's supervisor on second offense, a conference with
his treatment provider on third offense and so on up to the fifth offense,
when the rules call for the agent to issue a summons or subpoena that could
send the offender to jail.

A study released in January found the program had helped motivate offenders
to stop using drugs. The study, by University of Maryland criminologist
Faye S. Taxman, found that the number of no-shows and positive drug tests
declined by 53 percent during the first two months. The study also found
that the number of offenders arrested for new crimes dropped by 23 percent
among a test group in Baltimore.

But punishing those who break the rules has posed a problem from the start.
In her January study, Taxman warned that agents were responding to just 3
percent of violations, and requesting arrest warrants in a tiny portion of
those cases. In July, an internal audit found improvement, showing that
agents were responding and applying sanctions 26 percent of the time, said
Townsend's policy director, Michael Sarbanes.

But drug treatment providers say they are seeing no improvement on their
end, where fewer than half of those referred to treatment ever show up.

Catherine McAlpine, human services program manager in the Montgomery County
Department of Health and Human Services, said the sanctions matrix is a
great concept that parole and probation agents have been unable to
translate into action. In Montgomery County, 80 percent of Break the Cycle
offenders are identified as needing drug treatment, she said, "but only 43
percent of them are actually entering treatment."

The problem of no-shows is just as bad in Baltimore.

"There really aren't sanctions," said Ruth Daiker, director of Baltimore's
Jones Falls Counseling Center. "They say there are sanctions, but I'm not
real aware of anything happening to our clients who don't show up."

Referring to Orleans-Lindsay, Daiker said, "What did he have ­ 72
violations? And nothing was done? I think that speaks for itself."

Staff writer Fredrick Kunkle contributed to this report.