DRUG COURTS EFFECTIVE, SAYS REVIEW BY COURTS AND DRUG AGENCY

SACRAMENTO- A nearly 10-year-old California experiment with a once-radical
substance treatment program has proven effective in cutting both crime and
drug abuse, two groups with interests in the program said Tuesday.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George, a Republican, said in releasing the report
that the study shows "drug courts are helping the justice system and the
public by decreasing drug use, improving lives, and protecting communities."

Arrests of drug court graduates dropped 85 percent for two years after they
successfully completed treatment, compared to two years before they entered
the program, according to a study of about 3,000 offenders who completed
the program in 34 California counties.

The California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs and the Judicial
Council said their study's participants often began with significant problems.

About 70 percent reported using drugs for more than five years, and 40
percent for more than a decade. Little more than half had graduated from
high school, and just 13 percent had attended college. A typical offender
had been arrested twice and jailed once in the two years before joining the
program.

The study also found that:

_ While 64 percent of offenders were unemployed when they entered the
program, 70 percent had jobs by the time they left.

_ 95 percent of babies born to mothers in the program were born drug-free,
and 96 percent of drug tests were negative for participants during the program.

_ 28 percent of graduates retained or regained child custody, 7 percent
gained visitation rights, and 8 percent caught up on child support payments.

_ The program saved state and local governments $42 million by diverting
offenders who otherwise would have gone to prison or jail, though that was
offset by the $14 million spent on the drug courts.

The study ordered by state legislators collected data on offenders sent to
drug courts in the 34 counties between January 2000 and September 2001.

Drug courts began in Dade County, Fla., in 1989, during the height of the
South Florida cocaine wars. They were first tried in Oakland in 1993 and
have since spread across the nation and to 50 of California's 58 counties.

They were among the most tolerant of court-based drug treatment programs
until November 2000, when California voters followed the lead of Arizona
and required that first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders be sent
to treatment rather than jail.

Still, Proposition 36 treatment programs that have worked best since the
initiative took effect last July have been those that followed a drug court
pattern, Butte County Judge Darrell W. Stevens, chair of Judicial Council
Proposition 36 Implementation Committee, said last week.

He and other advocates laud the courts' reliance on cooperation between law
enforcement and treatment providers, overseen by a judge who alternately
threatens and cajoles offenders into getting help and staying drug-free.

Proposition 36 courts work much the same way, but judges are generally
barred from using the "flash incarcerations" many drug court judges used to
instantly punish recalcitrant offenders with several days in jail.