A SANER APPROACH

Prop. 36 Programs To Allow Treatment Rather Than Jail For Certain Offenders Should Be Continued

With the funding mandated for Proposition 36, which permits certain categories of drug offenders to receive treatment instead of jail time, set to expire next year, some lawmakers are advocating that the program not be funded or that it be changed substantially. A review of a number of outcomes of the program should prompt them to think otherwise.

Prop. 36 was approved in 2000 by 60 percent of California voters. It allows an offender convicted of a non-violent drug crime to take probation and community-based drug abuse treatment in lieu of jail or prison. The law appropriated funds to expand treatment facilities in California, so it is not cost-free.

The first option, ending Prop. 36 funding, would be shortsighted.

A new study from UCLA demonstrates that it costs taxpayers less money to offer treatment than to put users of certain drugs in jail, and the savings are likely to increase over the years. Since the law was passed by a voter initiative, a new initiative would be required to amend it.

Not only would that be a costly procedure, there is little or no evidence that adding more punitive elements to the program - the alternative some critics advocate - would make it more effective in reducing the harm caused to innocent members of society by the use and/or prohibition of certain drugs.

The UCLA study - which the law mandated in order to have objective information on how it was working - found there was a cost-benefit ratio of 2.5-to-1, meaning the taxpayers saved $2.50 for every dollar spent, for first-year eligible offenders. Compared to jail, taxpayers spent $2,861 less for each of the 61,609 offenders in the first year of their eligibility.

Not all those who entered treatment completed the program. As anyone familiar with drug and alcohol abuse knows, some addicts require several rounds of treatment and some are unlikely ever to respond to it. But for those who completed treatment, the cost-benefit ration was 4-to-1.

Translated into dollars, the study estimated that California taxpayers saved $176.3 million in the first year of Prop. 36, and that total savings over five years (including not having to build a new prison whose necessity had been projected in pre-2000 budgets) will amount to $1.4 billion.

Some of the benefits of Prop. 36 are difficult to render in dollars. If as many as a quarter of those who enter treatment complete it and become more productive members of society, the long-term benefits will be substantial.

Meanwhile, California's violent crime rate has declined since 2000 at a rate higher than the national average. Crime rates are complex phenomena, so it would not be responsible to attribute this decline to Prop. 36. But it is certain that the fears of those who worried that treatment rather than incarceration of some illicit drug users would lead to more crime have not been realized.

Given that the Legislature is unlikely to decriminalize the use of any of the drugs now under prohibition - which is what those who think adults should be treated as adults with the right to make (and take full responsibility for the consequences of) their own choices in a free society would advocate - drug treatment under Prop. 36 is a bargain compared to building more jails for addicts.

Legislators who want to minimize the harm done by drugs and prohibition rather than subsidize the prison-industrial complex will vote to fund Prop. 36 and other treatment programs.

It's a more paternalistic approach than we might like, but it does less damage than the punitive approach.