SMART TREATMENT FOR DRUGS

Only the ugly politics of crime can block Chief Judge Judith Kaye's plan to
offer treatment instead of prison to nonviolent drug addicts.

This is not just an idea whose time has come, it's backed by facts on the
ground, particularly as established over a 10-year period by Charles Hynes,
the Brooklyn district attorney.

Hynes is the pioneer, the first prosecutor in America to set up an
alternative for felony addicts, called the Drug Treatment
Alternative-to-Prison Program. Under this, a person who had a previous
felony conviction can choose two years in a rehab facility over jail.

This deal is not open to drug traffickers, nor to violent criminals. In
other words, it's there for junkies who, if they sold drugs, did it to keep
their habits alive.

Hynes set up the program in 1990, and it has worked like a charm. He sports
a 60% rate of guys and dolls who don't get back to junk. This is beyond belief.

The Drug Warriors, who have controlled the country since the war on drugs
went into effect in 1914, never let a good statistic stand in their way.
The only cure was prison, and anyone who suggested an alternative was a
legalizer or was soft on crime. Treatment instead of jail was wimpy, that
was the message, and it apparently has not lost its steam. Else, why was
Kaye's proposal not embraced by prosecutors and legislators across the board?

It was met, instead, by carping. Who the hell is she to tell the district
attorneys what to do?

The chief judge of New York, like the Pope, has no army. She needs the
district attorneys to go along, and perhaps the Legislature.

So the critics say, and this is true. Without the prosecutors, there will
be nothing, for if they do not agree to drop jail sentences in favor of
treatment, the prisons will continue to be filled with nonviolent junkies.

But against Joe Hynes' numbers, why the hell would any DA object, or any
state legislator?

The problem is not just dealing with the previous-felony nonviolent
addicts. Indeed, until now, they have been a small part of those whom Hynes
has provided the alternative of rehab to prison.

The drug court in Brooklyn handles many more cases than the court that
deals with second-time felons. This drug court handles mainly small-time
druggies who deal to keep their habits. Even so, they usually fall under
the draconian level of the Rockefeller drug laws, which require life
sentences for those who possess 4 grams of cocaine or heroin or deal more
than 2 grams.

In the drug court, defendants who plead not guilty do not have to serve two
years in a rehab place. Ordinarily, they get outpatient treatment, and this
has worked very well. The success rate closely approaches that of those who
are sent to rehab centers.

The only thing that has never worked is prison. Yet prison is where the
addicts go — we are talking about two-thirds of the population in the state
joints. Which is the way it goes nationally.

So what do we do about it? Kaye is trying, against the politics of crime
that makes it impossible even to suggest the medicalization of drugs. The
war on drugs is the greatest failure in American history, dwarfing the
Vietnam War. But no politician or judge dares to suggest its end.

What Joe Hynes pioneered and Judith Kaye promotes is the most pragmatic way
to control the madness. You would hope that it would be embraced. Instead,
we get Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau telling The New York
Times that it's a theory. It's a fact, and I'm not crackin'.