MD. TO TAKE HARDER LINE WITH ADDICTS

Stepped-Up Testing Aimed at Recidivism

By Scott Wilson, Washington Post Staff Writer

Maryland will undertake a major effort to reduce repeat drugrelated crime
by forcing addicts on probation and parole to submit to drug tests as often
as twice a week and by punishing those who fail to do so.

Proponents say the program will be the biggest of its kind in the nation.

Called Break the Cycle, the program will replace a system that imposes few
rules on the state's 25,000 drug addicts who are free on probation or
parole and who require treatment.

State officials hope that rehabilitating those addicts will not only keep
them out of jail but also sharply reduce burglaries, car thefts and other
property crimes that result from addicts' efforts to support drug habits.

"People are sick and tired of drugrelated crime," said Lt. Gov. Kathleen
Kennedy Townsend (D), who will outline the program at a news conference in
Baltimore tomorrow. "This is a targeted approach that says we're not going
to debate treatment and punishment. We're going to stop the revolving door."

The program, which has been tested on a smaller scale in the District and
elsewhere, is to begin July 1 and is consistent with federal drug policy
that takes effect next year. Congress enacted legislation in 1996 that
requires states to design drug tests, backed by sanctions, for addicts in
prison and on parole or risk losing federal prison money.

Maryland, which began designing its program before Congress acted, will be
the first to apply the rules statewide and to extend them to the larger
population of addicts on probation.

Under Maryland's current rules, drug addicts placed on probation or freed
on parole are required to attend drug treatment sessions. But state
officials say supervision often is lax and drug testing sporadic. And even
if a person fails the urinalysis, officials say, the courts rarely find out
about it until that person is facing new criminal charges stemming from
addiction.

In Maryland, addicts on probation outnumber those on parole by a ratio of 3
to 1. The regulations will require jail time if addicts either skip drug
tests or fail them. Urinalysis will be as frequent as twice a week to make
sure that cocaine, which passes through the body in three to four days,
will not escape detection. The results will be processed more quickly at
renovated laboratories.

In addition, treatment clinics will be required to report to probation or
parole officers within 24 hours after an addict has failed or skipped a
drug test. The state Division of Parole and Probation will begin helping
local police find violators.

Each of Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore will design its own penalties,
which in other parts of the country range from community service to jail
time.

Next week representatives from each jurisdiction will meet at the
University of Maryland at College Park to begin shaping the program and
deciding on penalties, which must be approved by the state Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Administration each April.

The Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration oversees $60 million a year in
state and federal grants that are distributed to all Maryland
jurisdictions. State officials say the new program will be funded with $30
million of that money and an undetermined amount of new state and federal
funding to expand treatment and improve laboratories.

"What this is all about is doing a lot better job with the resources we
have," said Adam Gelb, the lieutenant governor's spokesman.

Where the program has been tested so far in the District and in counties
in Michigan and Oregon results have been encouraging, officials say. In
Coos County, Ore., officials reported a 75 percent decline in the frequency
of positive drug tests among addicts on probation within three months after
the program began. Violators there are jailed for two days after the first
positive test, 10 days after the second and 30 days after the third.

Mark Kleiman, a professor of policy studies at the University of California
at Los Angeles and a supporter of the program, said the biggest risk to its
credibility would arise if officials impose sanctions that cannot be
carried out because of crowded prisons.

"The way this thing can collapse, and it would collapse in an instant, is
to apply a sanction and have no space in jail," Kleiman said. "Then it
becomes another joke."