Courting Favor for Proposition 36

Re to the op-ed piece written by my colleague, Judge Ronald P. Kreber (“Prop. 36 Would Be Death Knell for Drug Courts,” Oct. 15):

In the past 10 years, we have seen a positive revolution in the way the criminal justice system treats offenders who take mind-altering drugs. We have instituted drug courts, where drug users are treated with caring and compassion as human beings with a problem. However, they are also held strictly accountable to satisfy the demands of the court’s drug treatment program. The results in many ways have been gratifying.

Recently numbers of people, including some of my fellow judges, have voiced concerns that the passage of Proposition 36 would undercut our drug courts. However, based upon my experience as the one who in effect began the first “drug court” in the country back in 1984, this simply is not the case.

Proposition 36 is not perfect. For example, it should not leave the funding of drug testing to chance. But it should be supported because it would provide an option to remove from the criminal justice system those people who are not problem users, leaving their use habits to be addressed by health-care professionals. This would leave drug courts, with their scarce resources, available to confront the problem drug users--and there certainly are enough of those to go around.

We did this in 1984 with problem alcohol users, and our program was also gratifyingly successful. Even though it is not illegal for adults to buy, possess or use alcohol, we were able to use the sanctions of the criminal justice system to hold problem users accountable for the crimes they committed, such as driving under the influence, assaults, spousal abuse, failure to make child-support payments, etc., and at the same time get them off alcohol. Thus, for example, we replaced a drinking driver with a sober one. Under Proposition 36, the same would be true for problem users who commit crimes under the influence of these other mind-altering substances.

However, if we do not support Proposition 36, we will allow the drug courts to perpetuate the failed “war on drugs,” with all of its needless and expensive prosecution and incarceration of non-problem drug users--at $21,243 per year. But voting for Proposition 36 gives us all a chance to move the policy of our country into a much more positive direction, while at the same time using the sanctions of the courts to address the criminal actions of people who use drugs.

JUDGE JAMES P. GRAY

Orange County Superior Court

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Kreber sings the drug courts’ praises and condemns Proposition 36, as if the choice we face is between the two. That is false.

He can point only to 275 graduates of the drug court system in Orange County over the last five years; that is because the vast majority of nonviolent drug offenders here and elsewhere receive only fines and prison sentences. The majority of them commit more crimes after doing their time.

That is the true status quo in California, and a better picture of the choice we face: continue paying many thousands per drug offender per year in jail again and again, or try paying a small fraction of that for treatment that is demonstrated to be more effective than prison at preventing repeat offenses.

A nice side benefit is that we could use the prison space freed up by Proposition 36 to hold people who commit serious crimes, like burglary and assault, instead of having to either let them go prematurely because of prison overcrowding or spend megabucks on new prisons. Who outside the prison industry has a problem with that?

JEREMY ANDERSON

Costa Mesa