Pubdate: Wed, 06 Jun 2001
Source: Virginian-Pilot (VA)
Copyright: 2001, The Virginian-Pilot
Contact:  http://www.pilotonline.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/483
Author: Bill Sizemore

DRUGS, NOT VIOLENCE, ARE THE FUEL FOR PRISON

About 80 percent of prisoners are drug abusers, according to estimates, yet 
at prisons such as Powhatan Correctional Center in State Farm, Va., there 
is little or no treatment offered to inmates. For years, politicians of 
both parties have been promising to sweep the streets of violent criminals 
and lock them away in Virginia's burgeoning prison system.

"Violent thugs are getting the message: Virginia is not the place to earn a 
living as a criminal predator, preying on innocent, law-abiding citizens,'' 
then-Gov. George Allen declared in 1995.

But Virginia's prison population has been swollen by people incarcerated 
for nonviolent crimes -- especially drug offenders.

* In the early 1980s, about 10 percent of Virginians being put in state 
prisons were drug offenders. By the 1990s, that figure had climbed to 25 
percent.

* In federal prisons today, drug defendants make up 60 percent of the 
inmate population. Violent offenders comprise just 12 percent. U.S. drug 
czar Barry McCaffrey has called the mushrooming population of imprisoned 
drug offenders "America's internal gulag.''

And there is a high human toll, critics say.

"They're tearing families apart with their drug war,'' said Lennice Werth 
of Crewe, Va., director of the drug-law reform group Virginians Against 
Drug Violence. "The war on drugs amounts to a war on families and children.''

Allen and other Virginia politicians who waged and now defend the drug war 
say their target is dealers, not users.

Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, chairman of the Virginia State 
Crime Commission, declared flatly in an interview: "Nobody goes into our 
state prison system for possession of drugs. It doesn't happen.''

Department of Corrections records tell a different story.

Of all the drug offenders admitted to state prisons in fiscal year 1998, 
two out of three were for possession, or possession with intent to 
distribute. Under Virginia law, possession with intent to distribute 
carries the same penalties as actual distribution.

More than one in 10 of all those admitted to prison in 1998 -- from 
burglars to murderers -- were locked up for possession of cocaine.

Richard P. Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, 
said most drug offenders imprisoned for simple possession have prior felony 
convictions.

Allen, the architect of Virginia's latest wave of prison construction, 
defended the state's tough anti-drug stance in an interview. In fact, he 
said, "I think we ought to have even harsher penalties for drug dealers.''

"The problem of drugs is something that I think we have to continue 
fighting and not just throw up our hands and say, 'Oh, gosh, this is 
hopeless,' '' Allen said. "I think what we're missing is leadership and 
efforts at a national level, because this is not just a state issue.''

Allen's not the only one pushing for harsher drug penalties. His successor, 
Gov. Jim Gilmore, wants to spend an added $41.5 million to crack down on 
drug abuse, including tougher sentences for many offenders.

"Illegal drugs are penetrating our communities and threatening our children 
more and more, year after year,'' Gilmore said in announcing the new 
initiative last fall. ". . . Illegal drugs today become Public Enemy No. 1.''

Prosecution hasn't affected drug use

Drug prosecutions have been underwritten by federal financial incentives. 
Over the past 10 years, Virginia localities have received more than $100 
million in federal drug-control grants.

Yet illicit drug use, according to national surveys, has remained more or 
less constant for a decade. The surveys suggest that the war on drugs, the 
principal factor behind the prison boom, isn't working.

"The Virginia legislature is among the many groups of folks in this country 
who think that if you punish people enough, they'll stop doing the stuff 
that you don't want them to do,'' said June Gertig, a Herndon, Va., lawyer 
whose son was a teenage drug addict. "But with addiction, it's not like 
that. Punishment doesn't stop the addiction. You've got to get underneath 
the addiction and treat it.''

In 1998, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse produced 
annually by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10.6 percent 
of Americans reported using an illicit drug in the past year. That number 
has hovered steadily between 10 and 11 percent since 1991.

State-by-state estimates produced by HHS indicate that drug use in Virginia 
mirrors the national pattern.

The most popular illegal drug, by far, is marijuana. With an estimated 
annual production value of $197 million, it has surpassed tobacco as 
Virginia's leading cash crop, according to the National Organization for 
Reform of Marijuana Laws. Yet, few Virginians are imprisoned on marijuana 
charges today.

Ironically, cocaine, the drug for which Virginians are most frequently 
prosecuted, is used by only a tiny minority of the population -- 1.7 
percent, according to the same 1998 survey.

Treatment may be more effective route Whatever the drug, a large body of 
research indicates that incarceration is a grossly expensive and 
ineffective method of discouraging use.

Research by Rand, a Washington think tank, has found that $1 million spent 
on drug treatment would reduce serious crime 15 times more than the same 
amount of money spent on expanding mandatory prison terms. Arizona, the 
first state to begin treating all its nonviolent drug offenders rather than 
locking them up, reported last spring that the new approach saved more than 
$2.5 million in the first year and is likely to reap greater savings in the 
future. Of 2,622 drug users diverted into probation and treatment, the 
report said, 77.5 percent subsequently tested free of drugs.

Ron Angelone, Virginia's corrections director, is fond of telling those who 
advocate rehabilitating inmates: "We can't rehabilitate anybody; they have 
to rehabilitate themselves.''

"Of course, we all agree with that,'' said Jean Auldridge, director of 
Virginia CURE (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants). "But we 
believe they should have the tools provided, and the opportunity, so 
they'll be ready to come out and resume their lives.''

"We need to do two things,'' Auldridge said. "One is to have more treatment 
programs available. And we need post-release assistance for the transition 
back into society.''

There is little emphasis on drug treatment in Virginia prisons. It has been 
estimated that as many as 80 percent of state prisoners are drug abusers, 
but only 8 percent of Virginia inmates are in drug treatment programs, 
according to the 1998 Corrections Yearbook.

Probation, the most common alternative to incarceration, is relatively rare 
in Virginia. Only five states have lower probation rates.

In recent years, the state has begun developing other alternatives to 
imprisonment such as detention centers, diversion centers and boot camps. 
But the number of people served is modest: There were 824 offenders 
enrolled in those three programs statewide as of June 30, 1999, and another 
223 on the waiting lists. The Senate Finance Committee staff predicts they 
will reduce prison-space demand by 1,300 beds -- about 4 percent of capacity.

Opportunities for education and vocational training are also skimpy. In a 
series of recent interviews, inmates told of waiting up to two years just 
to get into a G.E.D. class.

"We're doing little or nothing to rehabilitate these people,'' said Sen. 
Richard J. Holland, D-Isle of Wight. "What we're doing is warehousing them.''

Prisoners say system ignores them Stories of Virginia's imprisoned drug 
offenders are suffused with seething resentment, cynicism and despair. 
Russell Stone, 37, is serving 15 years for the sale of marijuana and 
cocaine and possession of LSD in Virginia Beach and Wytheville.

He has recently been transferred to Western Tidewater Regional Jail in 
Suffolk from Bland Correctional Center, a complex of three-story, flat-top 
brick buildings, guard towers and razor-wire fences nestled amid the 
verdant mountains of Bland County in southwest Virginia.

Stone says drugs were an escape from pain. He spent much of his childhood 
in a series of orphanages and foster homes, a victim of physical, emotional 
and sexual abuse.

He has been turned down for parole seven times. He will be due for 
mandatory release in April after having spent more than nine years behind bars.

It has been largely wasted time, in Stone's view. He has little to show for 
it beyond a G.E.D. and a basic life-skills class. He has had virtually no 
drug treatment.

"For somebody who's got a drug problem, locking 'em up and keeping 'em 
locked up for years and years doesn't help much,'' he said in an interview.

"The system has failed so many. The politicians all say, 'I'm going to lock 
'em all up.' They're not telling people about all the guys they're going to 
let go who will be more hostile, more bitter, more aggressive and will 
commit more serious crimes when they get out because of the way they were 
treated in here.''

Stone has contracted hepatitis C, a potentially deadly disease that is 
rampant in the prison system, and has been unable to get treatment for it.

Except for a sister in Virginia Beach, all of his close relatives have died 
since he has been incarcerated.

Now that his release date is near, he is frightened of what lies ahead.

He'll get $25 and a bus ticket, and he's on his own. The system provides no 
aftercare -- no one to help him find a job or a place to live, no one to 
turn to when he is overwhelmed by the challenges of readjustment.

"It's scary,'' he said. "Every day I walk around and think: Who will help 
me lay the right foundation? Who's going to be there when I get off that 
Greyhound bus in Tidewater? I'll be 38, but I'll be like a kid, coming out 
with so many needs, so many wants, so many desires.''

Drugs sending more women to prison The drug-war dragnet is sweeping more 
and more women into prison. The rate of growth in female admissions is 
twice the rate for males. There were 1,035 women imprisoned in fiscal year 
1998, which was 11.7 percent of admissions -- up from 9.2 percent in 1990.

Belinda Adams, 35, is at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women, a 
campus-like complex in the rolling hills of Goochland County west of 
Richmond. She is doing 5 3/4 years for possession of cocaine, forgery and 
other charges -- all related to a crack cocaine addiction.

Like Stone, she came from a dysfunctional family and was abused as a child. 
By her mid-teens, she said, "I started looking for an external solution to 
an internal problem.''

Since she has been locked up, she has lost her mother to suicide. She has a 
3-year-old son who is being raised by a family friend.

"I feel I have a pretty large sentence for a nonviolent crime,'' Adams said.

"Drug abuse is an illness,'' she said. ``I'm not trying to justify my 
crimes in any way, but I feel there must be a better way to give people the 
help they need.''

Treatment is hard when drugs are plentiful For most drug prisoners, 
treatment for their addiction remains a distant goal. Terry Swinson, 38, is 
doing 25 years at Keen Mountain Correctional Center in Buchanan County for 
selling $40 worth of crack cocaine -- less than 1 gram. He was convicted in 
Suffolk in 1994.

The only program available to him is a G.E.D. class, and he doesn't need 
that: He's already a high school graduate. He is on a waiting list for a 
substance abuse class, but there's no such class offered at Keen Mountain.

Another factor working against rehabilitation of drug offenders, say some 
inmates, is the prevalence of illegal drugs in prison.

"It's kind of hard to tell a man to stop doing drugs when the drug dealer's 
his next-door neighbor,'' said Geoff Faulkner, 26, of Hopewell, who is 
doing 9 1/2 years at Nottoway Correctional Center for cocaine possession, 
forgery and related charges.

Drugs are "very common'' in prison, said Faulkner, who has been unable to 
get into a drug treatment program.

Joseph Lee Garrett, 29, of Fredericksburg, who is doing 52 years on 
marijuana and LSD conspiracy charges at Wallens Ridge State Prison, said 
getting drugs in prison is ``as easy as in the free world.''

Garrett said he has been waiting eight years to get into a drug treatment 
program.

Creativity often pays off Sometimes, inmates find a way to get what they 
need in spite of the system. Damian Blakley, 20, is doing 10 years for 
cocaine possession with intent to distribute. He was convicted in Norfolk 
at age 16.

Once in prison, Blakley established a clean record that earned him a Level 
1 security classification, the one reserved for the lowest-risk inmates. 
That got him sent to the Halifax Correctional Unit, a low-security field 
unit in Southside Virginia that puts road gangs to work on state highways.

But there was a downside. There was no drug treatment, no education, no 
vocational training.

"I wanted to get a trade so I can have a skill to get a job once I re-enter 
society,'' Blakley said. But at Halifax, it wasn't going to happen.

"I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard spot,'' Blakley said. 
"So do you know what I had to do? I had to catch some charges.''

Blakley deliberately incurred disciplinary charges by refusing to go out on 
a road crew. As a result, he was transferred to Lawrenceville Correctional 
Center, a new, privately operated Level 3 facility.

The Lawrenceville prison, he said, "is loaded down with trades. Plumbing, 
interior decorating, a computer course, a greenhouse, carpentry. . . .

"Man, it's crazy. It's backwards. You just have to roll with it -- or you 
have to be creative.''
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens