NEW YORK TO OFFER MOST ADDICTS TREATMENT INSTEAD OF JAIL TERMS

New York will become the first state to require that nearly all
nonviolent criminals who are drug addicts be offered treatment instead
of jail time, in an effort to sharply reduce both the number of repeat
offenders clogging the courts and the population in the state's
prisons and jails. Many states, including New York, have offered pilot
programs like this in certain courts, but not on this scale and never
statewide.

Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who has wide latitude to restructure the
courts, yesterday ordered them to start phasing in the program
immediately; it will be fully in place by 2003. Judge Kaye said the
initiative would divert up to 10,000 nonviolent criminals a year to
addiction treatment, a significant number in a state where 95,000
people are behind bars.

It will not, however, apply to nonviolent offenders convicted under
the state's Rockefeller-era drug laws, which sometimes result in
longer sentences for people arrested with drugs than for rapists and
murderers.

Criminal justice experts and court officials, noting that
court-required treatment has an average success rate of 70 percent,
said the initiative would reduce the number of people who repeatedly
commit crimes like burglary and prostitution to support their
addictions. They predicted that the state's inmate population would
decrease by at least 10 percent once the program was in full force.

Some experts said Judge Kaye's order was a sign that the courts were
evolving into a social service agency of last resort, focusing on
rehabilitation as well as on punishment. The chief judge said the plan
would deal not only with a criminal justice problem, but also with
"ruined lives, broken families, neglected children, ravaged
communities."

Judge Kaye estimated that the initiative would save the government
$500 million a year in prison, foster care and mental health costs,
without requiring more beds in treatment programs.

To be eligible, offenders will have to test positive for drugs and be
willing to plead guilty. They will be assigned to specially trained
judges who will monitor their cases.

Instead of going to jail, the defendants will enter a rigorous
treatment program that will generally last two years, and they will
submit to strict monitoring by court officials, including continued
drug tests.

If they relapse, they will go to jail, most likely receiving stiffer
sentences than normally given now, although that will be left to the
judge's discretion.

Even if a defendant chooses to stand trial, the judges and district
attorneys will still have the discretion to refer them to drug
treatment until trial.

If they are found not guilty, in all likelihood treatment will be
continued, said a court spokesman, David Bookstaver.

The commission that researched the plan for Judge Kaye included drug
treatment experts, district attorneys, judges and lawyers, who were
asked to study how the burdens on the court system could be eased
without compromising public safety.

The chairman of the commission, Robert B. Fiske Jr., a former United
States attorney in Manhattan, said at a news conference yesterday that
the initiative was not soft on crime, noting that it would not apply
to violent criminals or those punished under the Rockefeller laws. The
commission, however, urged the State Legislature to give judges more
flexibility under those drug-sentencing laws.

Criminal justice experts praised the initiative, saying that it
recognized the futility of punishing drug addicts only to have them
commit more crimes later. But some experts said it did not go far
enough and might tempt some people who wanted treatment to plead
guilty even if they had not committed a crime.

"In an ideal society, we would not create compulsion or overly strong
incentives" to plead guilty, said Charles D. Adler, chairman of the
criminal law committee of the New York City Bar Association.

There are other questions about how the program will be carried out.
It requires a vast apparatus within the courts to screen and track
addicts. And those difficulties, the commission's report notes, are
magnified in New York City, where the number of drug addicts accused
of crimes dwarfs the caseload in upstate cities.

Over the last two decades, drug-related cases in New York State have
increased by 400 percent the report said.

In New York City alone, 75 percent of all people arrested tested
positive for drugs. And the rate of repeat offenses among nonviolent
offenders who are addicts can be as high as 35 percent, the commission
said.

Typically, these defendants are arraigned and then sentenced by judges
with no expertise in drug problems who may see more than 100 cases a
day, spending an average of 5 minutes on each, according to court records.

The quickest way for judges to dispose of these cases is to sentence
the defendants to jail, leading to spiraling costs.

The state spends nearly $650 million a year to imprison drug
offenders, or $29,000 a person.

At the same time, the more than 1,200 drug treatment centers in the
state have available space, substance-abuse experts said, and could
expand as the courts provide more clients. Most of the treatment under
this plan will be paid for by Medicaid or public assistance programs,
and the plan's cost, about $103.6 million a year, will be more than
offset by the savings, state officials said.

"It's an approach that's steeped in rationality and common sense,"
said Timothy Murray, who developed the nation's first drug-treatment
court in Miami in 1990, and is the director of program development for
the Bureau of Justice Assistance at the United States Department of
Justice. "It's astonishing to see the results when people go through
court-mandated treatment."

On average, court-mandated drug treatment programs around the country
succeed for 70 percent of those enrolled. In New York City's pilot
programs, only 12 percent of the offenders who participated were
arrested again, compared with 35 percent of those who did not go
through a program.

Marilyn Sanders, 37, said the pilot drug court in Brooklyn, on which
this system will be modeled, transformed her life.

Ms. Sanders, who is from a middle-class family, said that she fell
into drug abuse and poverty, and that the courts took away her two
children.

After finishing the court treatment program, she became an aide for
the office of court administration in Brooklyn.

"The life I am living now is so great and wonderful," she said. "They
gave me a chance to turn my life around." But she said, "If you get
this opportunity, you've got to be willing."