Drug Use Found in 3 Out of 4 Booked at L.A.-Area Jails

Three of every four crime suspects booked into Los Angeles-area jails have illegal drugs in their systems, and more than half are using cocaine, according to a study by UCLA drug-abuse researchers.

The study, the first of its kind in Los Angeles, found drug use in 76% of the men and 79% of the women who entered selected jails during January and February. The tests involved urine samples taken voluntarily from 656 inmates, most of them arrested on charges that did not involve drugs.

“Yes, I have to admit I was surprised,” Dr. Douglas Anglin, director of the UCLA Drug Abuse Research Group, said Monday.

Anglin noted that only 17% of the inmates in the study were in jail on drug-related charges.

“You would expect high (percentage) rates there,” he said. “But 83% were brought in for non-drug crimes. And the level of positive testing in that group is nearly as high as in the drug group.”

Anglin, who undertook the study as part of an expanding program sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, said the tests were administered along with questionnaires at four jails: Parker Center Jail, Van Nuys Jail, Sybil Brand Institute for Women and the jail at the Lakewood sheriff’s station.

Ninety-eight percent of the inmates who were asked to participate in the anonymous study supplied urine samples, including 414 men and 242 women, the researchers reported.

Anglin said the figures place Los Angeles about on a par with other major cities, such as New York and Washington, when criminal behavior is correlated with drug abuse. According to comparable studies, the percentage of jail inmates on drugs at the time of their arrests was found to be 79% in New York, 77% in Washington, 75% in San Diego and 73% in Chicago. At the low end of the scale, Phoenix reported 53%, Indianapolis, 60% and Detroit, 66%, Anglin said.

Researchers, over all, have been “very surprised at the extent and the intensity of drug abuse in those cities,” the UCLA researcher said. “Even good old Portland (Ore.) is up there at 70%.”

Los Angeles police said the numbers confirm what has long been common knowledge in law enforcement.

“It’s not surprising to me at all,” Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said. “For a long time I’ve been preaching the problems of narcotics as it relates to crime. If we can solve the narcotics problem, we will reduce crime substantially.”

Glenn Levant, deputy chief in charge of LAPD narcotics enforcement, said Los Angeles is like most major cities--waging a desperate battle to try to lessen the problem.

“The fact that people who commit crimes are using drugs has been known in law enforcement for many years,” he said. “It’s consistent throughout the country. That’s the amazing thing--there’s no part of America immune from this menace.”

LAPD surveys and field work show that 70% of all cases handled by the department in some way involve drug abuse, Levant said. Although street gangs have become more heavily involved in street sales of illegal drugs, such as cocaine or “crack,” the problem extends far beyond that, he said.

“This is not a South-Central L.A. problem,” Levant said. “There is no border to this problem. It affects all walks of life, all demographic groups.”

UCLA researcher Tim Ryan, who directed the project and conducted jailhouse interviews of inmates, said the absence of a clear pattern in drug users was one of the surprising results of the study. Cocaine use was found in 58% of the men and 65% of the women tested, he said. Marijuana use was found in 35% of the men and 26% of the women.

Those men and women included first-time offenders and repeat convicts, affluent career professionals and street thugs.

“It cuts across all groups that you would generally break society into,” Ryan said. “It’s just difficult to pin down a category.”

Ryan said the research group began looking at the problem with a smaller sampling of 388 inmates in October and November. That initial phase of the study found drug use in 69% of the men and 80% of the women tested. The effort was expanded in January and February, and the team was successful in sharply raising the percentage of inmates who agreed to the urine tests, he said.

Ryan said the researchers may have found higher levels of drug use in women inmates because testing was more thorough at Sybil Brand Institute for Women, which is operated by Los Angeles County.

During the week that researchers spent there, virtually all of the arriving inmates were tested during the designated hours of 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., Ryan said.

By contrast, when researchers were at the city-operated Parker Center Jail downtown, they were unable to interview all of the men who were brought in, he said. As a result, researchers concentrated on the non-drug users, Ryan said.

The research, funded by state and federal grants, found a surprisingly low use of PCP and heroin, but many inmates reported that they had turned to cocaine, instead, because it was easier to find, Ryan said.