PRISON IS NO DETERRENT FOR DETERMINED ADDICT

SACRAMENTO -- With an estimated 130,000 addicts locked within their cold,
bare walls, the state's 33 prisons would seem to be a huge detoxification
center.

Except for one problem: Drugs are easy to find.

Despite the best efforts of prison authorities, drugs are smuggled in by
family, friends and even prison workers, sent through the mail and
manufactured in the prison.

"It's a constant struggle to keep the flow of drugs out of our
institutions," said Stephen Green, spokesman for the California Youth and
Adult Correctional Agency.

During a 20-month study of prisons drugs, authorities found the largest
number of incidents involved visitor smuggling.

Visitors occasionally feel coerced into bringing narcotics into the prison,
said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

Authorities also found drugs in inmates' quarterly packages, which
prisoners can receive four times a year. They accounted for 58 percent of
the drugs discovered.

Prison officials said they believe they could stem the flow of drugs by
banning inmate quarterly packages and instead require family members and
friends to send food or presents to prisoners from a private company.

Under this system, which is used by several states, family members choose
from a catalog and then the company fills the order.

Prison rights groups complain that this would make sending food and gifts
to inmates far more expensive.

State Sen. Steve Peace, D-El Cajon, has blocked the department's request on
another ground: He said he believes the department should more closely
monitor quarterly packages before changing the system.

He argues the department could restrict the list of senders and look more
carefully at where the packages originate. Even if the state requires an
inmate's family and friends to use a private company, he said, those
packages still would have to be searched.

"Their resistance to trying reasonable alternatives makes me suspicious,"
Peace said, adding that some private company with a profit motive might be
behind the effort to change the system.