PRISONS ARE A HOTBED OF DRUG USE, SURVEY FINDS

Corrections: Former Inmates Say The Environment Permits And Often Even
Fosters Substance Abuse.

Prisons in California and across the nation are virtual drug dens, with
inmates easily able to score fixes inside and make connections to obtain and
sell drugs when they get out, according to a rare survey of drug users now
in treatment.

The survey, sponsored by a well-known rehabilitation program, found that 88%
of former inmates said they found it easy to obtain drugs in prison, and 46%
reported that their stints there made them more likely to use drugs than had
they not been incarcerated.

The findings are included in a poll of nearly 600 residents of the drug
treatment program Phoenix House at 10 of its locations in New York, Florida,
Texas and Santa Ana in Orange County. Many of them were paroled to Phoenix
House directly from prison.

It is a population whose opinions and insights are rarely plumbed. Yet these
ex-cons--male and female--offer surprisingly conservative attitudes about
one of society's most intractable social problems.

Most, for example, oppose legalizing drugs like cocaine, crack, heroin and
amphetamines; they support putting more cops on the street to fight drug
crimes, and most believe the penalties for drug offenses are either not
tough enough or just about right.

But they are hardly fans of the system, and many decried the paucity of
treatment programs in prisons, saying they were given little motivation to
quit drugs.

"Prisons provide environments that sustain substance abuse among users and
even foster drug use in nonusers," said Mitchell S. Rosenthal, a child
psychiatrist and president of Phoenix House. "Treatment is just not part of
the equation, even though individuals who have been in prison have told us
that society would benefit from treatment."

The issue resonates in California, where officials with the state Department
of Corrections acknowledged at a legislative hearing last year that drugs
are easily available, if not rampant, in prison and that abuse of them make
inmates more violent and likely to commit crimes after their release.

A Corrections Department spokeswoman, Margot Bach, said Thursday that she
had not seen the Phoenix House survey and would not comment on it. But she
defended the department's efforts to flush the system of drugs, noting that
the state has recently begun a program that randomly tests a sampling of
inmates for drugs each week at several state facilities. The experiment also
includes drug-sniffing dog teams and new technology that can detect minute
particles of controlled substances on surfaces.

Prison officials also routinely open packages and mail received by inmates
and watch visiting areas where drugs might be smuggled, Bach said. But the
department is hard-pressed to keep up with the craft employed by inmates
determined to get drugs and those willing to help them.

Correctional officials have discovered drugs secreted under postage stamps
and hidden in soft candies. Guards have intercepted greeting cards soaked in
methamphetamines.

"I'm confident that we're doing all we can, but it can be a challenge for
the department, because the methods are getting more and more sophisticated
and it's a matter of trying to stay one step ahead," Bach said.

The department estimates that 80% of all prison inmates had histories of
substance abuse before their incarceration and that nearly 40% of all
inmates are imprisoned specifically for dealing in or possessing drugs.

The Phoenix House survey, which was conducted in April by the national
polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, found:

* 83% of the respondents (92% in California) said they had been arrested on
a drug-related charge.

* 46% (55% in California) said that being in jail made them more likely to
use drugs.

* 78% said putting drug users in jail had little effect on controlling the
drug problem.

Phoenix House residents, interviewed this week at the group's Venice
facility, provided harrowing accounts of the ubiquity of drugs in prison and
the consequences.

"Drugs were more prevalent in prison than outside," said Sally, a
40-year-old mother of three who spent nearly 10 months at the Central
California Women's Facility in Chowchilla for possessing cocaine. She did
not want her last name used. "You could get anything you wanted: heroin,
crack and lots of weed. The inmates even made their own alcohol, using
oranges and bread and letting it ferment."

She said that during her stint at least two women overdosed on drugs but
survived.

Adam Foster described the prisons where he has been held as like a
"gladiator school," with little chance of being caught with drugs.

"Sometimes, in a lock-down situation, they'd do drug searches, but I never
saw anyone come in with dogs or do random drug testing," said Foster, 36,
who was released from Corcoran State Prison in April and is enrolled in the
Phoenix House program in Venice. "Most of the prison wars are about drugs
and who's going to control the yard, which depends on who has most of the
drug money coming in."

The drug connections described were varied: A friend of a friend might be a
civilian worker in the institution and be willing to supply; vendors often
can be bought off; girlfriends and family often smuggle in drugs during
visits, and many guards and other prison staff will supply drugs for money,
he said.

But it is in prison that Foster began to change his life, echoing another
finding of the Phoenix House survey: 64% of respondents (50% in California)
said their lives are better off as a result of their prison experience,
despite the drug prevalence there.

Foster, a father of two young children, said he grew tired of living life
"on the installment plan" and at Corcoran he was able to enter one of the
few state prison programs that focuses on rehabilitation, developed by
Phoenix House three years ago.

The program includes a 739-bed facility where inmates are separated from the
main prison population and receive the kind of intensive treatment available
in outside residency programs. A similar treatment program was recently
opened at the women's prison in Chowchilla.

Some experts say the report's description of drug availability in prison is
overstated. They argue that as much emphasis should be placed on testing and
treating probationers and parolees as is put on inmates.

"The availability of drugs will vary from prison to prison, prisoner to
prisoner and drug to drug," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a UCLA professor of
public policy and director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program there.

"Anyone who was a serious heroin or cocaine user outside would find it very
hard to maintain that inside. They mostly come out of prison detoxed. But as
soon as they hit the street, they come out looking for drugs."

Easier Access A survey of drug users in treatment found that many former
inmates said their time in prison made them more likely to use drugs than
had they not been incarcerated.

Do you think that being put in prison or jail made you more likely to use
drugs, less likely to use drugs or did it have no effect? More likely: 46%
Less likely: 37% No difference: 17%

* * *
Could you get drugs if you wanted to in prison or jail?
Yes: 88%
No: 12%

* * * Among the former inmates in California, New York, Florida and Texas
who were surveyed, California respondents were more likely to be involved
with drugs.

* * * Were you ever arrested on a drug-related charge?

Yes No
All 83% 17%
California 92% 8%
Florida 80% 20%
New York 83% 17%
Texas 76% 24%

Source: Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates Inc.