Sunday, March 22, 1998

Texans should rethink drug rehab funding

We're all worried about crime.

Abilenians, Texans, Americans - crime remains at the top of the list when people are asked to name what public issues concern them most.

And what's the quick answer for fighting crime? Why, lock the criminals up, of course. Punish them, separate them from law-abiding society, throw away the key. That's how we protect our families, our streets, our businesses.

Texas has seen a prison-building boom this decade. Disgusted with turning criminals loose from overcrowded prisons, Texans have willingly paid millions to construct new prisons and new jails, and we've been incarcerating criminals at a record rate. Texas now has more than 140,000 behind bars.

Certainly, villains need to be locked up and for a long time. Murderers, rapists, robbers, thieves, drug pushers - violators of the code of decent conduct - deserve punishment to fit the crime. We'll back the law enforcement that catches these crooks and pay the price of keeping them behind bars, which comes to about $25,000 apiece per year.

But there's one fallacy with this theory of combating crime. Just locking up some types of criminals for a few years doesn't make them better people when they get out. It just takes them out of circulation for a while. When they're released, they're back to the same old cycle of crime, apprehension, incarceration - a continuing drain on law enforcement manpower and tax revenue.

Wouldn't it be great if we could send some of those repeat offenders in another direction, away from returning to the criminal justice system? A national study released last week by bipartisan public health experts says with a sizeable group of criminals, that's exactly what we can do.

Medical treatment for drug users

Drug users are clogging our courts and prisons, whether for direct drug possession offenses or for drug-related crimes of theft, armed robbery and assault. This new study says medical treatment for drug addiction works as well as medical treatment for chronic diseases like diabetes, that it dramatically reduces crime and is significantly cheaper than prison.

Such conclusions go against conventional wisdom and against the political leadership Texas has received in recent years. In 1996, Gov. Bush launched a broad investigation of fraud in the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse. Advocates of drug rehabilitation agencies funded through TCADA called it a witch hunt motivated by the belief that drug rehabilitation is only a con game. Although some fraud was uncovered, many agencies, such as Abilene's own Serenity House, were exonerated - but only after extensive audits, red tape and negative publicity.

Worse, the 1997 Legislature, while proclaiming its opposition to crime, drastically cut state money for drug treatment, forcing places like Serenity House to curtail the number of clients they could serve and turn to the private sector for funding.

Last week's study strongly suggests the Legislature should reconsider the value of drug rehabilitation. If we take even half the drug users in prison and change their lives by medical treatment, we can reduce crime, cut the costs of incarceration and increase the number of citizens who are paying taxes rather than living off them. Why isn't that better than just keeping people from using drugs for a few years before turning them loose to start again?