http://www.sjmercury.com/news/local/docs/083372.htm

Jampacked prisons in crisis

Drug, job programs needed, panel told

SACRAMENTO (AP) California's prisons and jails are bursting at the
seams, but little is being done to relieve the pressure with alternative
sentencing and drug rehabilitation programs, the state's Little Hoover
Commission was told Thursday.

``We need to act quickly before our overburdened system goes full tilt,''
said Louise Fyock, a member of the state Board of Corrections and director
of a San Diego County resource center for parolees.

She recommended drug treatment and job training both in and after prison
for all druginvolved offenders, as a costeffective way of preventing
their return to a life of crime.

Douglas Lipton, senior research fellow at the New Yorkbased National
Development and Research Institutes, told commissioners such intensive
programs have been shown to reduce recidivism by 25 percent among the
highest risk drugaddicted inmates heroin and cocaine users with long
criminal records.

Those addictoffenders typically each commit 40 to 60 robberies, 70 to 100
burglaries and more than 4,000 drug transactions a year, he said.

Recently, however, more than 50 studies have shown that such offenders can
be redeemed to crimefree, productive lives saving a great deal of money
and cutting down on crime, Lipton said.

But James Nielsen, a former state senator who heads the Board of Prison
Terms, said he would be leery of and taxpayers would be unlikely to
support focusing the state's slim resources on such highrisk offenders.

He suggested that inmates with a demonstrated desire to improve themselves
and a good prison record would be better bets for communitybased
sentencing programs.

California's prisons have only 1,500 beds for inmates undergoing drug
rehabilitation, commissioner Stanley Zax said. Most do not continue livein
drug treatment in community facilities once paroled a critical component
of successful programs, according to Lipton and Fyock.

``Politically, in this state, there's no interest in aftercare,''
Zax said.

The commission, officially named the Milton Marks Commission on California
State Government Organization and Economy, met at the state Capitol to
examine costeffective alternatives to prison and probation in its third
and final hearing on state correctional policies.

Published Friday, September 26, 1997, in the San Jose Mercury News