STUDY FINDS LESS DRUG AID FOR PRISONERS

The proportion of new prison inmates who were drug users at the time
of their arrest increased this decade, while drug treatment in state
and federal prisons fell sharply, according to a study released on
Tuesday by the Justice Department.

"What is particularly tragic," said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of
criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, "is that drug
treatment in prison, where it can be coerced, has proven to be
effective as an anti-crime program.

"This is an unintended consequence of prison expansion," Mr. Rosenfeld
said in an interview. "Each time we spend a dollar on building a new
prison or expanding an existing one, it is one less dollar for drug
treatment."

Also Tuesday, President Clinton announced that he would propose $215
million in his next budget for testing and treating prisoners for drug
use. About $115 million is currently budgeted for combating drug use
by prisoners, parolees and probationers.

"We have to break this cycle," Mr. Clinton said. "We have to give
these people a chance to be drug-free and to be productive citizens
again."

The anti-drug proposal had been planned for some time as a significant
part of Mr. Clinton's overall anti-crime strategy, White House aides
said. Anticipating bad news in the Justice Department report, they
timed its announcement for Tuesday in hopes of blunting the report's
impact.

The new study, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, reported that the
proportion of state inmates who had been drug users before arrest -
that is, had used drugs in the previous month - rose to 57 percent in
1997 from 50 percent in 1990, as the proportion among federal inmates
increased to 45 percent from 32 percent.

The increase in drug use by prisoners in state and federal prisons in
the period leading up to their crimes appears to be the result of
increased attention by both law-enforcement officials and legislators
to drugs, singling out drug users for more arrests and giving them
longer sentences if they have a history of drug involvement, the
experts said.

The Justice Department report underscored the strong link between drug
use and criminality, finding that 83 percent of inmates in state
prisons and 73 percent of those in federal prisons had used drugs at
some point in their lives.

The Justice Department report also found that more violent crimes were
committed by people who had been drinking alcohol than by those under
the influence of drugs.