Arizona’s Drug Program Offers Preview for Voters

This is where the experiment began, in the land of jumbo cactus and diamondback rattlers. Arizona voters decided four years ago that people caught with drugs for personal use--and no record of violence--should be treated for their addiction, not put behind bars.

Now Californians are being asked to embrace a similar system, and evidence of what lies ahead if Proposition 36 passes next month can be found in the therapy centers and courthouses of our neighbor to the east.

Those who oversee Arizona’s program are cautiously upbeat, saying that it saves taxpayer dollars by keeping low-level drug offenders out of jail while giving them the help they need to get clean. Funding for drug treatment has doubled, and one survey showed that three-fourths of those completing therapy stayed drug-free.

But the system is young, and some fiery critics spot trouble. The doubters are led by prosecutors, judges and probation officers who lament that they no longer have the authority to jail program participants who slip up.

Without that leverage, critics say, some Arizona offenders--officials can’t quantify it yet--are flouting the law and walking away from treatment. Judges are using other sanctions, as well as creative incentives, to keep people from straying. But it’s too early to tell whether such tactics can match the coercive power of incarceration.

“The fact that we don’t have that stick anymore is very, very frustrating,” said Zachary Dal Pra, chief of adult probation for Maricopa County, home of Phoenix and 70% of Arizona residents. “On the other hand, we’ve got twice as many treatment dollars in our system, and that’s wonderful. . . . I don’t think the verdict is in yet.”

The only assessment of Arizona’s program so far was conducted after its first year. It showed that 61% of those who had completed their treatment stayed clean and had no new arrests. But officials agree it’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions.

In California, Proposition 36 would divert many nonviolent drug possession offenders and parole violators into treatment rather than jail or prison--and allocate $120 million to help them get well.

Graduates of such a program could have their convictions erased under the measure. Those who flunk could land in prison.

Treatment is making a comeback all over the nation, fueled by a grass-roots backlash against drug war spending that many consider a losing investment. New York has begun offering nonviolent addicts two years of monitored treatment instead of jail, and most other states--California included--use “drug courts” to divert a small number of offenders into therapy supervised by a judge.

But no state has ventured further down the road than Arizona--a place known for Republicans and tough-on-crime philosophies.

Arizona’s prison population, like California’s, has ballooned over the last two decades, with a large proportion of the increase linked to drug crimes. Two out of three of those arrested are addicts, and a large proportion of certain crimes--child abuse and neglect, for example--stem from substance abuse, officials say.

The answer, some Arizonans decided, was a 1996 ballot initiative similar to California’s Proposition 36. It represented a quantum shift in public policy, proposing that nonviolent drug offenders are more sick than criminally inclined.

Wealthy Supporters Back Measure

The measure’s success at the polls can be credited to the same three men who are financing the Proposition 36 drive in California and have bankrolled drug policy measures in a handful of other states. One is George Soros, a New York financier and philanthropist. Another is Peter Lewis, an insurance magnate from Cleveland.

The third is Arizonan John Sperling, who founded the University of Phoenix system and made his fortune by taking public the company that ran it. Sperling calls his multimillion-dollar investment in ballot measures “direct political action to assault the idiocies of the drug war.”

Sperling said in an interview that he began compiling a dossier on the drug war in the mid-1980s, convinced that the nation’s policies were not just foolhardy but also destructive, and disproportionately punished minorities.

“When I took my company public in 1994, I finally had some money to do something about it,” he said. “The drug war is a fraud, and our polling shows the people are way ahead of the politicians on this.”

The Arizona measure passed 2 to 1 after Sperling and his allies outspent opponents about $1.5 million to $30,000. Foes were “caught with our pants down,” said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant to Maricopa County’s top prosecutor and one of the measure’s harshest critics. “This initiative was so far out we never thought the voters would go for it.”

After the election, the Legislature amended the measure, a reaction triggered mostly by an element of the initiative that permitted the use of marijuana and other drugs for medicinal purposes. Sperling’s group promptly put it back on the ballot in 1998, and voters endorsed it again.

Arizona’s new system puts those convicted of a first or second drug possession charge on probation and finances their treatment with $4 million a year in liquor taxes. Those with a violent crime in their past, and those convicted of drug sales or manufacturing, don’t qualify.

Once convicted, an Arizona offender is assigned a probation officer and referred to a treatment center. Some wind up at Desert Winds Counseling in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.

Desert Winds was founded by Angel Rogers, who, with four other licensed therapists, treats 120 clients, leading group sessions in a room filled with sofas, armchairs and potted plants. The offenders, who attend up to three sessions a week, typically for six months, sit in a circle and begin each meeting with “check in,” when each confides a high point and low point of the week and acknowledges any cravings.

Then the group moves on to the day’s topic--anger management, relationships, relapse prevention--laid out in a treatment curriculum used throughout the state and monitored by auditors who ensure that counselors meet standards.

Rogers says that 74% of the clients sent to her under the state program complete their treatment plan, despite being “grumpy, very resistant” when they begin.

‘There’s a Gray Area With Drug Abuse’

Catherine Owen, 40, has been a Desert Winds client since February. Heavyset with shoulder-length brown hair, Owen is probably the person the authors of the Arizona initiative had in mind. Before her arrest for methamphetamine possession, she had never been in contact with the criminal justice system. But drugs had ruined her life.

By the time the handcuffs were slipped on, Owen’s methamphetamine habit had cost her a job as a helicopter technician at Boeing, along with her four-bedroom house, her car, her speedboat, her husband and custody of her 8-year-old son. Her arrest was the self-described “wake-up call” she needed.

Owen remembers voting for the Arizona initiative. Now she is indescribably grateful it’s on the books.

“I have broken the law--I have used drugs and that definitely is a criminal act,” she said. “But I am not your average everyday criminal. . . . There’s a gray area with drug abuse. There are people who rob and steal every day because of a drug habit, but there are others like me who haven’t crossed that line.”

In August, Owen slipped up, testing positive for drugs in a random urinalysis. Under Arizona’s old drug court system, she might have been sent to jail. Under the new program, she was put on a stricter treatment and drug testing schedule and encouraged to do better. She will be incarcerated only if she commits a new crime.

California’s Proposition 36 is somewhat stricter; a participant who repeatedly violates probation, is considered dangerous or is proven “unamenable to treatment” could be sent to prison.

Lotstein says that the absence of the jail sanction makes Arizona’s program “an abject failure.” He says that some participants are thumbing their nose at treatment, prompting judges to throw up their hands and terminate probation for the most egregious violators.

“Why waste resources on somebody who won’t take treatment seriously?” Lotstein said. Those offenders whose probation is terminated, he said, “are not likely to get clean on their own, so they’re going out and committing new crimes.”

So far, there are no numbers to document the scale of that problem. The state is about to embark on a study that will come up with such data and compare the success of a drug court treatment program that carries the threat of jail with one that does not.

In the meantime, Arizona judges are getting creative in their quest to keep offenders focused.

Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Colleen McNally uses a combination of sanctions and rewards, plus a hearty dose of praise for good behavior. Those who test dirty are given “some pretty unpleasant task”--like cleaning public buildings on weekends or, in one case, writing a two-page term paper about the health effects of cocaine. Some are forced to sit in court all day, or are subject to house arrest.

Star pupils are rewarded with zoo passes, tickets to Arizona Diamondbacks games, books and gift certificates. Graduates get a polished stone, which McNally calls “a symbol of strength they can carry in their pocket and touch as a reminder of what they’ve accomplished.”

Lotstein says the idea that “two tickets to the zoo will keep people clean is laughable.”

McNally acknowledges that she wasn’t sure how “some of these guys--who look pretty tough, with tattoos and all--would respond to zoo tickets.” But, she said, “it’s been a really positive thing. I get these huge smiles. The feeling of being recognized seems to mean a lot.”

Barbara Broderick, who edited Arizona’s early study of the treatment program and is the state’s director of adult probation, is hopeful about its prospects.

“What we do know is that the voters wanted us to treat addiction as a public health problem and help people in the community, not in our jails,” Broderick said. “We’re doing that. How positive will our outcomes be over the long haul? We don’t know yet.”