Drugs, Alcohol Linked to 80% of Those Behind Bars

Drug and alcohol abuse and addiction played a part in the crimes committed by 80% of the 1.7 million men and women now behind bars in the United States, a major national study released Thursday concludes.

The study by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse is the most authoritative assessment yet linking heavy use of drugs and alcohol to crime. And it is expected to increase pressure for mandatory substance abuse treatment for inmates while they are in prison and after their release.

“Those 1.4 million offenders in state and federal prisons and local jails violated drug or alcohol laws, were high at the time they committed their crimes, stole property to buy drugs, or have a history of drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, or share some combination of these,” said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman of the Columbia center.

Califano, secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Jimmy Carter administration, said the three-year study’s results call for “opening a second front in the war on crime”--inside the nation’s prisons.

This would involve identifying drug and alcohol abusers, assessing their treatment and training needs, separating them from criminal incorrigibles and giving them “the hand up they need to become productive citizens and responsible parents,” Califano told a press conference here.

It also would involve a substantial investment of public funds--an average of $6,500 per inmate per year--that both states and the federal government would be hard-pressed to produce. Still, the study argues that such a commitment would pay off in the long run.

For instance, the study found that inmates with alcohol- and drug-use problems are the most likely to be reincarcerated, with length of sentences increasing for repeat offenders. Thus, effective treatment programs could dramatically reduce future incarceration costs, the study contends.

The study acknowledges that many of those imprisoned for crimes in which their drug or alcohol use was a factor “would have committed their offenses even in the absence of substance abuse.” But hundreds of thousands of inmates “would be law-abiding, working, taxpaying citizens and responsible parents, if they lived sober lives,” Califano said.

In addition to documenting the central role that drug and alcohol abuse and addiction play in the soaring population of federal, state and local prisons and jails, the study concludes that:

* Alcohol is more closely associated with violent crime than any other drug, most notably crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin.

* The leading substance abuse crime in America is drunk driving, accounting for 1.4 million arrests in 1995 at a cost of $5.2 billion for arrest and prosecution.

Califano said that “the most troublesome aspect of these grim statistics is that the nation is doing so little to change them.”

According to the study, conducted from 1993 to 1996, the number of inmates needing substance abuse treatment climbed from 688,000 to 840,000, while the number in treatment hovered around 150,000. Califano also said that “much of the treatment . . . is inadequate.”

The annual average cost of $6,500 per inmate to provide the treatment, appropriate education, job training and health care envisioned by the study does not count routine incarceration costs.

The new spending would add up to $7.8 billion for the 1.2 million inmates the study identifies as drug and alcohol abusers or addicts (200,000 more inmates were found to be dealers who do not use drugs).

The study was vague on how its proposals would be funded but argued that in-prison treatment and follow-up programs would prove cost-effective, eventually saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

The study’s authors use these figures in making the argument: For each inmate who successfully completes the $6,500-a-year treatment and becomes a taxpaying, law-abiding citizen, the annual economic benefit is $68,800. That represents the savings on incarceration and health-care costs, salary earned, taxes paid and contributions to the economy.

If only 10% of the 1.2 million inmates with drug or alcohol problems were successfully treated and trained, these 120,000 individuals would generate $8.256 billion in “economic benefit” in the first year of work after release, the study estimates.

But persuading states to fund the initial costs could prove difficult.

In 1996, a Clinton administration effort to require states to include drug treatment programs as a condition of receiving federal grants for prison building was watered down by Congress to requiring only that they include a plan for such treatment in their prison-building program.

And White House drug policy director Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, while praising the Columbia study’s findings, noted that “when it comes to drug treatment, the federal government will not be the solution.”

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Inmates and Addiction

The study found that drug and alcohol abuse and addiction are implicated in the incarceration of 80% of the 1.7 million people behind bars in the United States.

How drugs and alcohol were involved:

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Local State Fed. jails Under influence (drugs or alcohol) at time of crime 48% 23% 55% Committed crime to get money for drugs 17% 10% 13% Inmate has a history of alcohol abuse 29% 14% 15% Inmate ever used illegal drugs regularly 64% 43% 59%

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Treatment needs vs. number getting help*

* State and federal inmates

Source: The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse