Pubdate: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 Date: 10/22/2000 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Author: Jeremy Anderson Kreber sings the drug courts' praises and condemns Proposition 36, as if the choice we face is between the two. That is false. He can point only to 275 graduates of the drug court system in Orange County over the last five years; that is because the vast majority of nonviolent drug offenders here and elsewhere receive only fines and prison sentences. The majority of them commit more crimes after doing their time. That is the true status quo in California, and a better picture of the choice we face: continue paying many thousands per drug offender per year in jail again and again, or try paying a small fraction of that for treatment that is demonstrated to be more effective than prison at preventing repeat offenses. A nice side benefit is that we could use the prison space freed up by Proposition 36 to hold people who commit serious crimes, like burglary and assault, instead of having to either let them go prematurely because of prison overcrowding or spend megabucks on new prisons. Who outside the prison industry has a problem with that? Jeremy Anderson, Costa Mesa