GRAND JURY KNOCKS DRUG PROPOSITION

The county's probation department is overdosing on Proposition 36 cases but
with state funding about to sunset and competing state bills pending,
officials will not ask for local financial help.

A civil grand jury report chided the drug law for overburdening courts and
the Probation Department. Rather than save hundreds of millions of dollars
annually by diverting drug offenders into treatment, the law does not give
judges or law enforcement any leeway to punish those who do not comply, the
report found.

"Proposition 36 has been singularly unsuccessful in meeting its goals of
reducing crime, saving the county money and helping people stop using
drugs," the report stated.

Instead, probation officers are processing approximately 100 violators
monthly without the option of shipping them back to jail for a wake-up call
about the harsher alternative.

"It's manageable but barely manageable," said Chief Probation Officer Loren
Buddress. "We're barely keeping our mouths above water."

Despite the widening gap between work and workers, Buddress said he will
not ask the county for financial help during next week's budget hearings.
The department is already converting 13 part-time employees to permanent
jobs with the opening of the new Youth Services Center. There is no room in
the rest of his budget to offset the cost of extra workers and the state is
obligated to fund Proposition 36 costs, Buddress said.

California voters passed Proposition 36 in November 2000, believing
treatment was better than incarceration for low-level drug offenders. The
twin goals were to save counties money and help people stop using drugs.
Many district attorneys including Jim Fox opposed the idea while many
groups supporting legalization and decriminalization backed it. Buddress
claims the "ill-conceived" law was pushed by groups wanting to eventually
legalize drugs and was not based on long-term findings by addiction experts.

"People don't ordinarily wake up on a Monday morning and say I'm not going
to take cocaine anymore. They need some type of coercive intervention.
Proposition 36 undercuts the ability to do that," Buddress said.

The proposition also leaves each county on its own to administer the programs.

The county received $1.9 million in state Proposition 36 funding for
2004-2005. Three-quarters of that is used for treatment and the rest is for
administrative costs, Buddress said.

That funding is set to end next year and currently four bills are before
the state Legislature to not only extend it but also add some punitive
action for violators. If passed, for example, Senate Bill 803 authored by
state Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, D-San Diego, allows "flash
incarceration," which enables a judge return a violator to jail for a day
or two before letting him or her return to treatment. The bill, introduced
in February, also pushes the state's allocation from $120 million to $150
million per year.

A competing measure, Senate Bill 556, authored by state Sen. Carole Migden,
D-San Francisco, expands treatment duration from one to two years. The bill
also would require counties to spend all but 12 percent of funds on
treatment, training, counseling and housing for defendants.

Buddress deems the county "wise" for taking a wait-and-see approach to the
program and funding. The state needs to decide first whether it wants to
increase funding or amend the law.

The grand jury calls on the Board of Supervisors to push the pending bill
and take steps to "relieve the burden placed on the Probation Department
and the court." Supervisor Jerry Hill said the only thing the board can do
is finance certain things, like drug testing, out of the general fund.
While Hill said the idea isn't out of the question, he prefers to wait for
the state.

He considered the county's own drug court and programs a better alternative
to Proposition 36.