Pubdate: Sun, 06 May 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Adam Gelb
Note: Adam Gelb, former policy director for Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen 
Kennedy Townsend, is executive vice president and chief operating officer 
of PSComm, LLC, a public safety management and technology consulting firm 
based in Rockville.

FORGET THE EXTREMES. TRY A DOSE OF BOTH

Since last November's elections, it has seemed like the forces arguing for 
a shift in American drug policy from punishment to treatment were gaining 
significant ground.

The notoriously harsh three-strikes-and-you're-out voters of California 
agreed to a ballot initiative that steers first-time nonviolent drug 
offenders into treatment rather than jail. The tough-on-crime governor of 
New York called for shortening prison sentences for drug offenders, and his 
fellow Republican governor of New Mexico is pushing decriminalization of 
marijuana.

Meanwhile, the sad odysseys of celebrity cocaine addicts Robert Downey Jr. 
and Darryl Strawberry are putting a sympathetic face on addiction, and the 
hit movie "Traffic" and the mistaken shoot-down of a missionary plane over 
Peru appear to be stirring a wave of public discontent with the nation's 
protracted war on drugs.

Now come reports that President Bush will retreat from these developments 
and appoint veteran drug warrior John P. Walters to be the next drug czar. 
Walters is a sworn skeptic of drug treatment and a chief architect of U.S. 
drug interdiction strategy.

So the great drug war debate lingers, stalemated between two sets of 
extremes -- punishment versus treatment, and supply versus demand.

Now, as before, neither side has it right.

Hundreds of thousands of criminal drug addicts cannot safely be spared 
prison and put into our nation's already overwhelmed community treatment 
and probation programs.

Nor can we incarcerate or intercept our way out of the problem.

Though the politics seem paralyzed, there is a budding consensus among drug 
policy experts and professionals in the field on a strategy that can both 
work and be sold to the public.

The strategy would retire the worn-out treatment versus incarceration 
debate in favor of a political and policy middle ground -- not just a 
"balance" in emphasis on supply and demand, but a much more subtle and 
sophisticated blending of the two philosophies.

What's required is a system that might be called "managed punishment." 
Rather than being locked up and warehoused, or cut loose and told to show 
up for treatment, drug-addicted offenders, whether convicted of a violent 
crime or mere possession, need finely tuned doses of treatment and 
punishment at the same time.

Such a system would deliver the right mix ofthe two approaches to 
individual addicts on a massive scale.

To make that possible, probation officers would need administrative 
authority to move offenders quickly up and down the various levels of 
custody -- from low-intensity probation to home detention to progressively 
increasing numbers of days in jail -- based on the results of frequent drug 
tests, attendance at counseling sessions and compliance with other terms of 
supervision. Drug treatment would have to be provided every step of the way.

The key to the system would be a rational and certain set of penalties and 
rewards spelled out in advance.

Each and every time an offender broke the rules, he would face a 
predictable, immediate and proportionate response.

No judge shopping, no excuses for getting high, no six-month delays waiting 
for a violation hearing in court.

This might seem like common sense, but it is a dramatic departure from 
current practice around the country.

There are now nearly 5 million Americans on probation or parole, 
outnumbering prisoners by more than three-to-one. These offenders are out 
in our neighborhoods, not behind bars, and account for the bulk of 
drug-related violence and theft.

In fact, drug-addicted offenders under supervision in the community have 
been estimated by leading drug policy expert Mark Kleiman to use an 
astounding 50 percent of all the cocaine consumed in the United States. Yet 
the focus has been on providing drug treatment to prison inmates, rather 
than to this far more immediate threat.

As a result, the vast majority of drug-addicted offenders released to 
community supervision -- whether assigned to probation by a judge or let 
out of prison by a parole board -- don't get a treatment slot and don't get 
tested for drug use on a regular basis.

Even when they do get treatment and testing, their probation officers don't 
have the ability to impose any consequences for skipped treatment or failed 
tests. Sometimes, an officer will get fed up with persistent violations and 
bring the offender to court, where the judgewill either slap him on the 
wrist and give him another chance or send him to prison to serve out his 
full sentence.

It's an all-or-nothing proposition that runs counter to everything we have 
learned about how to help people change their behavior.

A growing number of "drug treatment courts," including several juvenile and 
adult operations in the District, Maryland and Virginia, provide close 
judicial oversight of probationers in treatment and have proven that the 
concept can work. Some of the better ones, such as the adult court in the 
District, can cut re-arrest rates in half. But because most drug courts 
restrict eligibility to lower-level offenders, they achieve a dangerous 
paradox: The more hardened offenders go through the regular probation 
system, where they get less supervision, and less-intensive testing and 
treatment.

More specialty courts and "alternatives to incarceration" programs are 
being planned at the local level, with some federal and state help. But 
they still will handle only a tiny fraction of the 5 million offenders now 
under state and federal legal supervision, and cannot absorb a crush of new 
clients that treatment advocates want to divert from prison.

We will not dig out of the drug war debate or reduce drug-related crime to 
an acceptable level until we move beyond these small pilot programs and 
overhaul the basic way the nation's community supervision and drug 
treatment agencies do their jobs.

We need many more treatment slots and probation officers, to be sure. But 
expanding capacity is not nearly enough.

Managed punishment requires that drug treatment programsbe organized into 
true local systems that direct addicts into the right slots for their 
individual needs, move clients quickly between programs as their addictions 
improve or worsen, and plug in related services such as mental health 
treatment, job training and housing assistance. Insurance must be required 
to cover more than a meager 10 counseling sessions.

The performance of individual programs must be tracked and statistically 
compared so the best can be rewarded and the worst weeded out.

Probation departments, for their part, must take advantage of advanced 
technologies that provide fast and accurate drug tests, track offenders' 
locations wherever they go, and share data with treatment providers and 
police so they know instantaneously when someone misses treatment or gets 
arrested.

And probation officers, like community police, must get out from behind 
their desks and build reliable sources of information in their community.

Most critically, treatment and probation staffs must present a united front 
to offenders.

Both professions must send the message that while relapse may be part of 
recovery, offenders cannot return to drug use without ramifications.

Because we know that addicts commit far fewer crimes while engaged in 
treatment, targeting drug-addicted offenders with a system of managed 
punishment would make a bigger, faster dent in the drug and crime problem 
than any other single strategy.

It would be cheaper than the increased incarceration and interdiction 
that's already planned.

It would be aggressive without bursting prisons or infringing on civil 
liberties. It would be compassionate without allowing de facto amnesty for 
junkies who break into homes -- and whose first sensational crime would 
simply swing the incarceration versus treatment debate back the other 
way.The middle ground of managed punishment is where we have the best 
chance of helping addicts and protecting our communities from the ravages 
of illegal drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager