Clinton to Order States to Fight Prison Drug Use

In an effort to break the link between drugs and crime, President Clinton plans today to order the states to assess the prevalence of drug use in their prisons and chart their success at reducing it, according to a senior White House official and a draft of the presidential directive.

Last year, as a condition of federal prison grants, Clinton and Congress gave the states until March to spell out their plans for combating drug use behind bars.

Taking that a step further, the directive the president is expected to sign today would require studies of the level of drug use in prisons and annual progress reports so that the public and the federal government can judge how well the states are doing.

The evidence is conclusive that criminals continue abusing drugs and alcohol while in prison and, once released, “go back out and commit crimes to feed their habits,’ said Rahm Emanuel, a top Clinton domestic policy advisor.

The president’s goal, Emanuel added, is to “rip the habit out of them” while they are in prison through a combination of mandatory drug testing and treatment.

“Convicted offenders who undergo drug testing and treatment while incarcerated and after release are approximately twice as likely to stay drug- and crime-free as those offenders who do not receive drug treatment,” Clinton said in a draft memorandum to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno dated Jan. 12.

The presidential action follows by a few days the release of a national report driving home the connection between heavy drug and alcohol use and crime. The study by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse shows that 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.

The White House had been working on the directive, but the president decided to announce it now because of the Columbia report, which is expected to increase pressure for mandatory substance abuse treatment for inmates while they are behind bars and on parole, Emanuel said.

In his state budget released Friday, California Gov. Pete Wilson proposed several new programs for combating drug use in the prison system, including new random drug testing for inmates and the use of dogs to intercept drugs.

State prison officials said the annual reports would not tax them. “We have no problem reporting whatever we determine on prevalence,” said Thomas Maddock, acting secretary of the California youth and adult correctional agency.

The White House also plans to renew its effort to press Congress to let states use their prison funds for drug testing and treatment.

In his draft memo to Reno, Clinton asked for legislation to be submitted to Congress that would enable states to use their “federal prison construction and substance abuse treatment funds to provide a full range of drug testing, drug treatment and sanctions for offenders under criminal justice supervision.”

Although Congress and the president agreed to require the states to come up with plans, the GOP-controlled Congress balked at allowing states to use prison funds for this purpose.

California officials, too, opposed this idea.

“That’s mixing apples and oranges,” Maddock said. “There’s a dramatic need for prison construction money too. [Clinton] should step up to the plate and fund both separately.”

The president’s memo also directed the attorney general to work with states on legislation to create “stiffer penalties for drug trafficking into and within correctional facilities.”

Clinton is also expected to announce that he will ask Congress for $192 million in his fiscal 1999 budget for a series of initiatives to promote what the White House calls its “coerced abstinence” programs and treatment in the criminal justice system.

The White House credits UCLA professor Mark Kleiman for inspiring the president’s anti-drug efforts in prisons. Kleiman argues that rooting out drug use among inmates and parolees is the most effective way to decrease demand for drugs in the United States.

Eighty percent of the cocaine and heroin is consumed by a relatively small number of chronic users, about 3 million, who spend an average of $15,000 per year on their addictions, Kleiman said.

“Since few of them can generate that much after-tax disposable income legitimately, about three-quarters of the hard-core users get arrested in the course of a year,” Kleiman, professor of policy studies at UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research, wrote in a commentary in the Los Angeles Times.

“When not in prison or jail, they are usually on bail, probation or parole. Therefore, about 60% of the cocaine and heroin sold in this country is sold to people who are nominally under the supervision of the criminal justice system.”

This makes the prison system an ideal place to try to root out the kind of drug abuse that leads to crime. However, Kleiman argued, “many hard-core users don’t want treatment if they can get cocaine or heroin instead.

“They have to be pushed into abstinence; talking and offering treatment aren’t enough.”

Kleiman said probation and parole departments should make abstinence a condition of continued liberty. He noted that few had set up consistent systems of screening and punishment.