DRUG COURTS OFFER MOST PROMISING SOLUTION

KORINA Camacho could be the poster child for a new kind of war on drugs.

Three years ago, Camacho says she was part of the problem. A 37-year-old
single mother on welfare and a chronic methamphetamine user for more than
13 years, she saw going to jail as easier than getting clean.

"(I was) just doing a lot of what I wasn't supposed to be doing," Camacho
said. "I would have ended up killing myself in my addiction or in prison."

Instead, Camacho got an other chance. And the route she took to get that
chance is considered by many to be the model for drug offenders: the
Alameda County drug court.

It is a program that blends law enforcement and treat ment -- a program
both supporters and critics of the war on drugs see as a more effective
alternative to the failing policies of recent years.

Drug courts themselves have been around almost at long as the war on drugs
- -- the first was established in Florida in 1989, and Alameda County
Superior Court established a similar program two years later.

But the number of such programs nationwide has exploded in the past few
years. Reports that drug court treatment reduced recidivism by 50 percent
at one-tenth the cost of incarceration caught the attention of national
drug control officials able to pump millions of dollars into the program.

"Not only do these courts reduce crime and drug use, but they also save
taxpayer dollars," federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey said in a recent
speech outlining plans to boost federal support for drug courts by 25
percent, to $50 million. "We need to greatly ex pand the number of drug
courts nationwide."

Superior Court Judge Peggy Hora, who heads up Hayward's young drug court
program, believes the reason for the resumed interest is simple:
incarcerating drug law breakers without offering them treatment hasn't worked.

"We tried an approach that didn't make sense economically, it didn't make
sense in human cost, and it certainly made no sense in case processing in
the criminal justice system when we were releasing violent offenders to
make room for nonviolent drug offenders," she said. "The law of addiction
is that you can punish it until the cows come home, and those people are
still going to be at it when they come out."

But Hora said that the funding still is not there for the
treatment-on-demand she believes would make the program more effective --
much less the resources to expand the drug court principles to other
crimes, most of which she said have some link to substance abuse.

"I think we have to have a budget where the toys at the border to detect
smuggling, which are very expensive toys, are equal to the amount of money
given to local community-based treatment programs where people can go and
get in treatment and start living productive lives," she said.

The reason drug courts work, many believe, is because they use a "carrot
and stick" approach that is finding new, broad support among both law
enforcement officials and drug treatment experts. Court-supervised drug
testing and the threat of incarceration encourages drug offenders to stay
clean and participate in treatment programs they might otherwise abandon.

A similar approach is being tried one step up the criminal justice ladder
from the drug courts. The California Department of Corrections recently has
expanded its relationship with treatment experts at Amity Foundation of
California to offer intensive treatment to up to 5,000 inmates.

Amity case manager Chris Geiger said that inmates in the program undergo up
to 18 months of intensive substance abuse treatment, ideally followed by
residential treatment for 120 days after their release.

The expanded program is still being evaluated, he said, but smaller,
similar programs at other California prisons tripled participants' chances
of staying out of jail in the future.

"We kind of have the big laboratory here in California," Geiger said. "It's
unprecedented in its thoroughness."

Like many treatment providers today, Geiger is a supporter of the same
"carrot and stick" approach used in drug courts. The criminal justice
system not only can encourage people to stay in treatment, he said, but
paying a debt to society can be an important part of a drug-using inmate's
therapy.

"Society in general wants to see punishment as part of the outcome for
their behavior, and I think there is some certain validity to that," he
said. "They're substance abusers, yes, but they've harmed people ... the
message has to be gotten to people that this is a behavior that people are
not accepting."

Treatment providers like Geiger are sharing that philosophical ground with
some of the original drug warriors, like former attorney general Edwin Meese.

"There has to be a greater emphasis on treatment programs, and particularly
treatment programs as a part of the criminal justice system," Meese said.
"The problem is, how do you get these people into treatment? Most of them
are not amenable to treatment without coercion. Therefore the criminal
justice system is the best way to get them in treatment."

The "carrot and stick" approach doesn't work for everybody. Offenders in
Hayward's program, which accepts only those with no prior drug cases,
diversions or violent crimes, have been testing clean more than 95 percent
of the time, Hora said. But Alameda County's drug court, which accepts any
person charged with simple drug possession, has a success rate of 35 percent.

Many of those graduates are firm believers in the value of combining the
criminal justice system with therapeutic remedies.

"I had such a bad attitude," said Comacho, who has now been clean for more
than 10 months and has begun training to become an airplane mechanic.
"Before, I would be planning my next hit ... it's not part of my agenda
today."