Critics Fear Reform May Strain Drug Programs

A day after California voters launched a revolution in how the state handles drug offenders, those on the front lines predicted that the change would rattle the criminal justice system and strain already overburdened treatment programs.

Passage of Proposition 36, which won Tuesday with 61% of the vote, put California in the forefront of a national movement to reform drug laws. The new law would allocate $120 million a year to treat, rather than imprison, nonviolent drug offenders.

Currently in California, nearly one in three of the state’s 162,000 prisoners is serving time for a crime related to drugs.

Under the new law, which will take full effect in July, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst expects that as many as 36,000 drug offenders a year will be diverted from prison or jail into treatment programs. An estimated 20,000 a year will qualify for help in Los Angeles County.

But experts Wednesday warned that millions of dollars more than the proposition allocates would be needed to get the program started and to pay for the oversight needed to keep participants from relapsing.

At the Los Angeles County Probation Department, officials worried about how to handle an influx of new offenders--as many as 18,000 next year alone.

“I have 44 officers supervising 33,000 people right now,” said David Davies, chief of adult field services for the department. “We have no idea how we’re going to handle all these new cases. It’s scary.”

Judges Bracing for Influx of Offenders

Los Angeles County judges also were bracing for an influx, predicting that the number of offenders diverted into treatment could increase twentyfold.

The impact will be “colossal,” said Judge Michael A. Tynan. Others predicted that many people arrested for drug crimes may now demand a trial, rather than accepting a plea bargain, because they will realize that the worst punishment brought by a guilty verdict would be treatment.

Assuming that Proposition 36 gets off the ground smoothly, a person convicted of a nonviolent drug offense--first-time possession of crack cocaine, for example--might experience something like this:

The offender would go before a judge, who would set probation conditions and assign him to a treatment program tailored to his addiction. Serious cases might get residential treatment, but most would be handled on an outpatient basis.

The offender would spend up to a year in treatment, plus the potential of six months of follow-up care. If he tested positive for drugs or violated rules of the treatment regimen, a judge could sentence him to a stricter program. If the offender ultimately were judged “un-amenable” to treatment or a danger to society, he could be incarcerated for one to three years.

Although many first-time drug offenders in places such as Los Angeles currently avoid incarceration by going through special “drug courts” or other diversion programs, Proposition 36 would vastly expand the pool of those sent to treatment. It also provides a guarantee that taxpayers will help pay for addiction treatment. Today’s drug courts provide some government-funded treatment but reach only about 5% of offenders.

Proposition 36 targets nonviolent offenders convicted of possessing drugs for personal use--not dealers, manufacturers or traffickers. It also mandates treatment--rather than a return to prison--for ex-convicts arrested for using drugs while on parole, providing that their original crime was not a violent one.

Following the Lead of Arizona

By approving Proposition 36, voters here followed the lead of those in Arizona, which launched a similar, though much smaller, program for low-level drug offenders four years ago. New York has also expanded its court-based diversion program for drug criminals, but California’s initiative is by far the most ambitious.

“It’s the single biggest leap forward we’ve seen,” said Ethan Nadelmann, who heads a foundation in New York that advocates decriminalization of drugs.

He is also an advisor to one of the key backers of Proposition 36, New York financier George Soros, who, with two other wealthy businessmen, have bankrolled 19 drug-related ballot measures in the last four years. Of those, 17 have passed, including five on Tuesday--Proposition 36 and measures in Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon.

At least one California prosecutor said the time apparently has come to overhaul a system he concedes is “nuts.”

“I’ve been in the system 30 years. We needed something to shake it up,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. David Ross, who supervises drug cases at the Van Nuys courthouse.

Others, however, warned of dire problems. One Alameda County prosecutor said the initiative had scattered “legal land mines” that would be blowing up for the next 20 years.

To handle some of the predicted problems, officials in Sacramento talked Wednesday about “cleanup” legislation to add money for drug testing, which is not funded by Proposition 36 but is considered critical to effective treatment.

Even the measure’s harshest critics applauded its injection of new money for publicly funded drug treatment, which is in chronically short supply in most regions.

“It’s great that after all our begging, people finally are willing to put up some money,” said Superior Court Judge Ellen DeShazer, who runs a drug court in Compton and opposed Proposition 36. “I just wish the powers that be had done this years ago.”

Gov. Gray Davis has not been generous with state dollars for drug treatment, allocating $102 million this year to be spread among the 58 counties. That budget, which covers services both for people referred to treatment by courts and for those who seek help voluntarily, has scarcely increased over the last decade.

State Senate Leader John Burton (D-San Francisco), a recovered drug user, said some legislators currently won’t vote for treatment dollars because they fear being labeled “soft on crime.” Proposition 36 is proof that “people can be ahead of politicians,” said Burton, who strongly backed the measure.

Proposition 36 comes at a time of mounting dissatisfaction with the nation’s war on drugs. An eclectic coalition of politicians and scholars--liberal and conservative alike--believes that punishing addicts with imprisonment is futile, only causing them to commit more crimes to sustain their habit upon release.

L.A. County Expects $40 Million Annually

Under the proposition, money for treatment would be doled out on the basis of population and a region’s drug arrests. The funds will begin flowing to counties soon--$60 million the first year, $120 million annually thereafter. But no offenders will be diverted until July 1, giving probation departments and courts time to gear up.

Los Angeles County officials expect to get about $40 million yearly under the initiative. But they estimated costs totaling about $60 million.

The lag time between now and July will give treatment centers the chance to expand and new ones the opportunity to open, officials hope. New centers will need to be licensed and certified by the state, a process that takes a minimum of six weeks.

Skeptics fear that there won’t be sufficient treatment slots available by July: “Given the current state of drug treatment facilities in California, we are talking about a two- to five-year process if we start now,” said San Francisco Chief Assistant Public Defender Jeffrey Adachi.

Also unclear is how probation departments will give drug offenders the close supervision experts say they need to stay straight. In Los Angeles, thousands of probationers have no personal contact with their probation officer at all, instead checking in monthly by mail or through a computerized card-swiping system.

Across the state, county officials were worried that the $120 million would fall considerably short of the amount necessary to make Proposition 36 work. Although it may cover treatment expenses, other costs--for courts and to expand the ranks of probation officers, for example--would go unmet.

Davis Plans to Talk With Legislators

Gov. Gray Davis said Wednesday that he would meet with legislative leaders to discuss possible tweaks to Proposition 36. But it was unclear if he would authorize additional money.

“I haven’t begun to deal with that,” he said. The governor also has a key appointment to make--director of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, a post that controls funding under Proposition 36 and has been vacant for more than a year.

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Times staff writers Beth Shuster and Dan Morain in Los Angeles and Maura Dolan in San Francisco contributed to this story.