SOLVING DRUG EPIDEMIC IN NATION'S PRISONS

ONE COMPONENT of President Clinton's anti-drug proposal has so much merit
that it must not get lost in the details of the huge plan or in the sharp,
partisan rhetoric that already engulfs the proposal.

Among the many recommendations in the $17 billion drug-reduction strategy
is one that would expand drug testing and treatment in prisons.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, coming out of the shadows after a long, close-
mouthed hiatus, has pronounced Clinton's drug-reduction proposal ``dead on
arrival in this Congress'' because it's a ``hodgepodge of half-steps and
half-truths.'' It is important that the public knows that among those
recommendations Gingrich wants to obliterate is one that could both cut
nationwide drug use and crime and ease overcrowding at prisons.

A new Columbia University study called ``Behind Bars: Substance Abuse and
America's Prison Population'' reports that inmates who received
well-designed prison-based drug treatment in one program were about 70
percent less likely to be rearrested within six months than those who did
not receive the treatment.

That percentage -- which has been repli cated to one degree or another at
other prisons throughout the country -- are even more significant when one
knows that for 80 percent of the men and women behind bars (some 1.4
million people) substance abuse has ``shaped their lives and criminal
histories.'' Also, inmates who are alcohol and drug abusers and addicts are
the most likely to be reincarcerated.

Considering the success of the treatment programs -- especially those that
last a minimum of a year -- and the in-and-out prison cycle for substance
abusers, the nation's lawmakers should now look beyond the trend toward
ever tougher sentences and seek alternative remedies that have power to
stop the cycle of drug abuse and crime.

And if the law-and-order types who have been running Congress for the past
few years could find it in their hearts to give those same inmates literacy
skills, a nation might find that prison could be a starting point for a
law-abiding life. According to one study, the typical 25- year-old male
prisoner functions two to three grade levels below the final grade actually
completed. Fifty percent of inmates in U.S. prisons do not have the skills
of a competent sixth grader. Another 25 percent cannot perform at a 12th
grade level.

Policymakers should focus more attention on reducing drug use and promoting
literacy in prisons. Despite three-strikes laws, not every inmate is going
to be locked up for life. Those who are released should be given a better
chance to stay off drugs and out of jail, both for their own sake and for
the sake of society.

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page 6