Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA) Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. Contact: PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191 Fax: (619) 293-1440 Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/ Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX Authors: Gretchen Burns Bergman and David Beck-Brown, Bergman is the co-director of PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing) and the parent of two sons who have the disease of heroin addiction. Beck-Brown is an arts educator who has worked with convicts in county, state and federal detention facilities. IS IMPRISONING ADDICTS THE BEST POLICY? We were raised to believe that the laws that govern us were set up for the greater good of the majority of our citizens. Somewhere along the line, some of that has changed. It is incredible to realize that today most families know of someone who has been incarcerated in a detention facility. Perhaps he or she is an immediate family member, a friend, or a friend of a friend. Few of us have been untouched by the prison growth of the past two decades. Behind the United States as a whole, California now has the biggest prison system in the western industrialized world, and we are the most overcrowded system in the United State. The positive effect of our prison growth is that California's tough law enforcement has encouraged some hard-core convicts to stop their criminal activities or to move to states that are known to be soft on crime. Prison inmates have been seen using maps of the United States to track which states had some form of "three-strikes" laws and which did not, in an attempt to avoid tough prosecution. A downside of this prison growth is that California has incarcerated a significant segment of our population who need substance abuse treatment in a therapeutic environment, rather than a penitentiary. Crimes of 85 percent of inmates are drug or alcohol related. Many of these people are young adults who are naive about the unwritten rules and regulations of the criminal subculture, just as they are victims of their own bad choices in life. They become potential victims of hard-core convicts. We see the current prison system acting as an incubator for organized crime. There is little or no recovery and rehabilitation, but there is violence, hatred and drug use behind bars. Our society has been dealing with a disease of the brain (addiction) with ignorance and fear for too long. Punitive incarceration is not just ineffective, it is dangerous. When so many of our sons and daughters are being sentenced to learning the destructive laws of the prison social system, instead of struggling to treat a painful and devastating health problem, we must re-examine our approach. Mandated (forced) treatment has been proven to work. It reduces costs to the taxpayer, leads to reduction in crime and recidivism, saves valuable lives and creates a safer community. In November, California voters will have an opportunity to make a necessary policy change in the handling of nonviolent drug offenders. The Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act will divert low-level, nonviolent drug possession offenders from prisons and into drug treatment and other rehabilitation services, preserving needed prison space for the population it was originally intended, violent criminals. We believe that this is an opportunity for citizens to pass legislation that truly is in the best interest of the majority, and that represents the greater good for society. Bergman is the co-director of PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment & Healing) and the parent of two sons who have the disease of heroin addiction. She can be reached via e-mail at Beck-Brown is an arts educator who has worked with convicts in county, state and federal detention facilities. He can be reached via e-mail at --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D