IN-PRISON DRUG PROGRAMS SHOULD BE EXPANDED

Treatment For Chronic Abusers Costs Less Than Incarceration

Drug-dependent individuals are responsible for a disproportionately
large percentage of violent crimes and property offenses, committing
about half of all felonies in big U.S. cities. According to the
National Institute of Justice's Arrestee and Drug Abuse Monitoring
report, roughly two-thirds of adults and more than half of juveniles
arrested test positive for at least one illicit drug.

A third of state prisoners and about 1 in 5 federal inmates said they
committed their offenses while under the influence of drugs. Many of
them turned to crime for money to support expensive drug habits.
Three-quarters of chronic cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine users
are arrested in the course of any given year, and only a quarter of
these people received drug treatment in the past. Most return to drugs
as soon as they complete their prison terms. In turn, drug abusers
constitute half the people on probation and parole in America.

Throughout the United States, 2 million arrested drug users a year
require treatment to extricate themselves from lives of crime that
keep them from being productive members of society.

Because so many drug addicts become involved with the criminal justice
system -- and take up a significant portion of America's
law-enforcement and corrections budget -- prisons are a natural place
to offer drug treatment. Studies prove that when people are forced
into therapy, results are positive. Unfortunately, only a small
proportion of inmates requesting drug treatment currently are helped.
Without effective intervention, we are merely postponing the time when
prisoners return to drugs and crime.

Research indicates that therapy lasting longer than 90 days is much
more likely to reduce drug use and crime. Follow-up is also important.
An evaluation conducted by Dr. James Inciardi, editor of American Drug
Scene and author of many books on drugs and prisons, demonstrated that
prisoners who participated in transitional work-release programs after
drug treatment were twice as likely to remain drug-free and a third
more likely to be arrest-free 18 months after release, compared to in
mates who received no such supervision.

These findings need to be given careful attention at a time when
probation and other intermediate measures are being eliminated. Drug
treatment coupled with various forms of rehabilitation, such as
literacy and job training, yields the best results.

Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse,
has made extraordinary contributions to the scientific understanding
of substance abuse as a brain disease. Although there is a
sociological context for drug use, biological aspects of addiction
must be corrected as well as behavioral dimensions of the problem. In
other words, addicts need medical help getting off the drugs that have
changed the chemistry of their brains.

Jeremy Travis, former director of the National Institute of Justice,
argues for drug treatment as an aspect of ``risk management.'' Simply
put, treatment reduces the risk that inmates will become repeat offenders.

The increase in spending for prisons has accelerated at a breakneck
pace. From 1980 to 1996, the number of people in U.S. prisons tripled,
largely due to drug and alcohol abuse. The cost to taxpayers of
keeping a person in jail is about $25,000 a year. Treatment costs are
very little by comparison. Experience has shown that we can't arrest
our way out of the drug problem.

Today, 700 drug courts have been instituted or are in the planning
stages throughout the United States -- up from the dozen that existed
in 1994. These courts offer drug treatment as an alternative to
incarceration for nonviolent offenders. Defendants who complete the
drug-court program either have their charges dismissed or sentences
reduced. More than 100,000 people have been diverted to drug courts,
which save money and lives.

But drug courts and other diversionary programs for drug treatment
currently reach only 3 percent of the criminal justice population. In
the interest of public safety as well as humane and effective
correctional policy, drug courts, drug-free prisons and drug treatment
for lawbreakers should be expanded. Ultimately, such programs will
reduce overall drug abuse in America.