Pubdate: Sat, 5 Mar 2011
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Authors: Nathan Koppel and Gary Fields

STATES RETHINK DRUG LAWS

Treatment Gains Favor Over Long Prison Terms; a New Look at Rehabilitation

A growing number of states are renouncing some of the long prison 
sentences that have been a hallmark of the war on drugs and instead 
focusing on treatment, which once-skeptical lawmakers now say is 
proven to be less expensive and more effective.

Kentucky on Thursday became the latest to make the shift when Gov. 
Steve Beshear signed into law a measure increasing spending on 
rehabilitation programs and intensive drug testing. The law also 
reduces penalties for many drug offenses and may allow some 
traffickers and users of smaller amounts of drugs to avoid prison.

Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are among 
those that have pending bills to reduce penalties for drug offenders, 
in some cases by directing defendants into treatment programs. 
Similar laws have taken effect in South Carolina, Colorado and New 
York in recent years. States have maintained stiff penalties for 
more-serious drug crimes.

While the changes are part of broader belt-tightening efforts, they 
also reflect a growing belief among state lawmakers that prosecuting 
drug offenders aggressively often fails to treat their underlying 
addiction problems and can result in offenders cycling in and out of 
prisons for years - a critique long voiced by groups that advocate in 
favor of defendants' rights.

"If you just throw everyone in jail, it's terribly expensive and they 
get out and they are in the same boat," said Tom Jensen, a Republican 
state senator in Kentucky who voted in favor of the law.

He said he had long "bought into the tough-on-crime concept" and 
adapting to a more rehabilitative model has been "an education process."

Lawmakers, Mr. Jensen said, had access to data indicating that drug 
offenders are less likely to reoffend if they receive intensive 
community treatment in lieu of prison.

But others argue such changes send the wrong message.

"You need to have serious consequences or repercussions in place if 
people use heroin, Oxycontin" and other drugs, said Scott Burns, 
executive director of the National District Attorneys Association.

The Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan group that advises on 
corrections and sentencing policy, assembles state-by-state data that 
it has shared with legislators. Pew presented research indicating 
some community supervision and treatment programs have significantly 
reduced recidivism rates for substance abusers and nonviolent offenders.

"We know so much more today than we did 30 years ago when we started 
down the prison-building path about what works to stop the cycle of 
crime and addiction," said Adam Gelb, a senior policy analyst at Pew.

Some who have seen Pew's figures, however, aren't persuaded. "Crime 
will go up in five to 10 years and people will wonder why," said 
Aaron Negangard, chairman of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys 
Council. "It's because we are letting too many people out of prison."

The state measures mark a sharp retreat from the war on drugs, which 
gathered steam in the 1980s and '90s with mandatory-minimum and 
three-strikes prison sentences that resulted in some drug offenders 
being locked up for decades. Drug arrests nationwide climbed from 
about 580,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million in 2009, according to the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Although some states started 
rethinking drug punishment before the recession, many more states 
have come on board in the past two years.

In 2007, Texas began shifting more drug offenders away from prison, 
which helped hold down the inmate population. The changes cost $241 
million, less than half what the state anticipated it would have 
spent to build three new prisons. The impact on the crime rate isn't clear.

While putting offenders on probation is far cheaper than sending them 
to prison, the cost differences may narrow in states that plan to 
spend more on community-supervision and treatment programs. 
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