BILL WOULD PUT SOME DRUG OFFENDERS IN TREATMENT INSTEAD OF PRISON

TOPEKA - With Kansas' prison system a breath away from capacity, a Senate
committee Monday offered a plan to free cell space by treating drug
offenders at home.

The measure, which the Judiciary Committee approved, now goes to the Senate
floor. Debate is expected later this week.

The plan would reduce the demand for prison beds by assigning drug users to
community-based treatment programs.

Senate President Dave Kerr, a Hutchinson Republican, said the proposal had
a chance in the Senate.

"If people really look at the facts, we're facing either more prisons or
dealing with groups differently," Kerr said.

Under the plan, people convicted of drug possession who currently would be
sent to prison would be assigned to community-based treatment instead.

In addition, those now serving time for drug possession could be released
from prison and sent to treatment programs if they passed screening tests
developed by the state Corrections Department.

The bill would require that those assigned to treatment programs have just
a single drug conviction with no other history of possessing, selling or
manufacturing drugs or of committing violent felonies.

The proposal was developed by the Kansas Sentencing Commission as a way to
better use prison space while treating drug addicts.

"I think people are looking at ways to deal with limited resources and
declining treatment programs," said Barbara Tombs, executive director of
the commission.

She said, however, that the commission had been working on the treatment
program long before Kansas' grim financial situation surfaced.

Paul Morrison, Johnson County district attorney, headed the Sentencing
Commission subcommittee that developed the legislation. He described it as
"pretty good public policy."

While generally enthusiastic about the legislation, Morrison was cautious
about the provision that could release some inmates to community treatment
programs.

"It would be fair to say I have mixed feelings about that," he said.

Similar programs are springing up across the country.

"There's a little bit of a swing toward treatment instead of
incarceration," said Blake Harrison, a criminal justice policy specialist
for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

An article in a conference publication last year noted that more than a
dozen states enacted laws in 2001 to relax mandatory minimum sentences and
to encourage treatment in lieu of prison or to expand drug courts.

In a National Public Radio interview in December, Malcolm Young, who heads
the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes decreased
use of incarceration, attributed efforts to change mandatory sentencing
laws to financial problems.

"The immediate cause seems to be money, with the recession and the cutback
in state surpluses to a point where most states now are facing budget
deficits," Young said.

In 2002, according to Kansas corrections records, 472 offenders were
imprisoned for drug possession, an offense that would be covered by the bill.

Projections are that in the budget year that begins July 1, the state will
need an additional 432 beds for those convicted of drug possession. The
following year, 508 more beds will be required.

Currently 98.4 percent of beds for male prisoners are occupied.

In 2000, the last time the Legislature tinkered with the corrections
system, post-release supervision was reduced. That freed some inmates from
state control.

Last year that legislation became a key issue in the Republican primary for
attorney general.

Phill Kline, who voted against the measure as a member of the House, made a
soft-on-crime campaign issue out of David Adkins' vote for it while he was
in the House.

On Monday, Adkins, now a state senator from Leawood, had some advice for
his colleagues:

"I would recommend anyone who wants to run for attorney general any time in
their lifetime not vote for that bill, because it would be used in
nefarious ways to bludgeon them to death politically."

He said, however, that anyone who voted against the bill would have an
obligation to find the money to build new prisons.

"You can't have it both ways," he said. "Getting tough on crime has a price
tag."

Kline, who was elected attorney general in November, could not be reached
for comment Monday. His office referred inquiries to Kyle Smith, an
attorney for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who described the bill as
"poor execution of a good concept."

"This is going to make us the most attractive state for drug possession,"
Smith said. "We'll be the new Amsterdam."

In testimony to the Judiciary Committee, Smith, speaking on behalf of the
Kansas Peace Officers Association, said: "It merely dumps hundreds of drug
abusers and traffickers out of the prisons and into our local
communities....It does this by simply decriminalizing all kinds of drug
possession and makes it retroactive."

The legislation does not include money to pay for the drug treatment programs.

Tombs and Morrison said the bill should not be passed without a way to pay
for treatment.

"If they are not going to fund it, they should not pass it," Morrison said.

Sen. Derek Schmidt, an Independence Republican who has an alternative
approach, voted against the plan in the Judiciary Committee.

"I think we should have them incarcerated instead of roaming free," Schmidt
said.

He supports a plan to provide treatment while drug users are held in
minimum-security prisons.

He said minimum-security prisons could be provided for about half the cost
of building medium-or maximum-security prisons.

"We're having this discussion not because there's a newfound interest in
drug treatment, but because we are out of prison space," Schmidt said.

What backers of the proposal are doing, he said, is, "allowing money
considerations to drive public safety and not the other way around."

To reach John L. Petterson, who covers Kansas government and politics, call
(785) 354-1388 or send e-mail to jpetterson@kcstar.com.

On the Web

The bill is SB 123. Bills are available on the Internet at
www.kslegislature.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi.

Prison occupancy

Kansas prison system populations as of Feb. 21:

. Total inmate population -- 8,912

. Total capacity -- 9,114

. Percent of capacity -- 97.8

. Total male population -- 8,349

. Total male capacity -- 8,482

. Percent of capacity -- 98.4

. Total female population -- 563

. Total female capacity -- 632

. Percent of capacity -- 89.0

Source: Kansas Department of Corrections