DRUG COURTS THREATENED BY BALLOT MEASURE

The people of California are at a crossroads in November. Proposition 36 is
seductive, exploitative and wrong. It claims to fund treatment for drug
abusers resulting in great savings to the taxpayer. In reality, this law is
nothing more than a scheme to keep people out of jail for using any drugs,
even the hard drugs like heroin, crack and date rape drugs like rohypnol.

I have been part of the criminal justice system for 30 years. As a
prosecutor, defense attorney, and, for the last 19 years a judge, I believe
I know enough about the "system" to offer these thoughts. I don't claim the
system is very good at dealing with drug users, but as one of the earliest
drug court judges, I feel we are doing better. We need more funds for
treatment, but it must have accountability. Unfortunately, many defendants
are not good candidates for treatment, and must be dealt with more harshly
with jail and even prison.

Let me offer this simple analysis:

For nearly 50 years, our federal political process has become more and more
reactive to social and cultural ills. The war on drugs is the perfect
picture of a nation doomed to continued failure due to a flawed battle
plan. We now incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people whose primary
problem is that they use and abuse drugs. The overwhelming consensus for
many years among experts is that incarceration fails to achieve recovery
from addiction and that legitimate drug and alcohol treatment offers the
only predictable solution for the largest number of the affected population.

This is not a new idea. As long as 30 years ago, serious study and
introspection by experts at the federal level led to the earliest forms of
treatment alternatives to incarceration. From a political and
jurisprudential viewpoint, these early efforts failed in large measure due
to lack of accountability and miserable success rates.

By the late 1980s, the justice system in many jurisdictions began to
collapse of its own weight. The criminal dockets were out of hand. Robbery,
rape and murder cases were losing space in courtrooms due to the
overwhelming crush of hundreds of thousands of drug cases. This overload
adversely affected all areas of the justice system from police through
district attorneys, public defenders, other court appointed attorneys,
pre-trial services, probation, parole, corrections and judges at the trial
and appellate level.

In some jurisdictions all around the country, a process called "drug court"
evolved from this chaos. In drug courts, judges direct and control an
individual's drug or alcohol treatment by becoming a partner with both the
individual and treatment. Frequent urine tests and personal appearances
before the drug court judge ensure accountability through individualized
sanctions including jail and validation of legitimate progress toward
sobriety. Success rates are very high in this population, compared to all
other forms of coerced treatment.

Proposition 36 will undo much of the functional legitimacy of drug court.
It seems to validate the painstaking progress of the drug courts, but, in
fact, will probably destroy them. It pretends to be interested in helping
addicts, but without drug-court-like accountability. All it will do (as
other failed efforts of the 1970s did) is help addicts out of the system.
They stand no better chances of sustained recovery.

A significant factor in the success of drug courts has been the initial
reality that lack of honest participation in treatment could result in real
sanctions like jail. This proposition eliminates that. This proposition
eliminates funding for drug testing. The people who drafted this reflect a
bias that it is wrong to incarcerate people for simple, non-violent drug
possession. Reflecting that bias, the proposition creates a senseless rat's
maze before any drug offender may be incarcerated.

Honest analysis of this law indicates a greater interest in keeping people
out of jail than in offering any meaningful treatment. Treatment must be
legitimate, professional and must last at least one year. The trick is to
get the drug-addicted person to stay in it. By elimination of the testing
and sanctions, they won't. They won't get better. They will continue to use
drugs. Their lives and the lives of their children and families will
continue to plague our culture.

All this proposition will accomplish is to keep them out of jail. If that
is the intent of this law, have the political courage to put that on the
ballot and get funding and support it for what it really stands for. Don't
co-opt years of work and struggle by drug court judges and thousands of
others by creating a false illusion of some altruistic concern for people
addicted to drugs.