IS IMPRISONING ADDICTS THE BEST POLICY?

We were raised to believe that the laws that govern us were set up for the
greater good of the majority of our citizens. Somewhere along the line,
some of that has changed.

It is incredible to realize that today most families know of someone who
has been incarcerated in a detention facility. Perhaps he or she is an
immediate family member, a friend, or a friend of a friend. Few of us have
been untouched by the prison growth of the past two decades. Behind the
United States as a whole, California now has the biggest prison system in
the western industrialized world, and we are the most overcrowded system in
the United State.

The positive effect of our prison growth is that California's tough law
enforcement has encouraged some hard-core convicts to stop their criminal
activities or to move to states that are known to be soft on crime. Prison
inmates have been seen using maps of the United States to track which
states had some form of "three-strikes" laws and which did not, in an
attempt to avoid tough prosecution.

A downside of this prison growth is that California has incarcerated a
significant segment of our population who need substance abuse treatment in
a therapeutic environment, rather than a penitentiary. Crimes of 85 percent
of inmates are drug or alcohol related. Many of these people are young
adults who are naive about the unwritten rules and regulations of the
criminal subculture, just as they are victims of their own bad choices in
life. They become potential victims of hard-core convicts.

We see the current prison system acting as an incubator for organized
crime. There is little or no recovery and rehabilitation, but there is
violence, hatred and drug use behind bars.

Our society has been dealing with a disease of the brain (addiction) with
ignorance and fear for too long. Punitive incarceration is not just
ineffective, it is dangerous. When so many of our sons and daughters are
being sentenced to learning the destructive laws of the prison social
system, instead of struggling to treat a painful and devastating health
problem, we must re-examine our approach.

Mandated (forced) treatment has been proven to work. It reduces costs to
the taxpayer, leads to reduction in crime and recidivism, saves valuable
lives and creates a safer community.

In November, California voters will have an opportunity to make a necessary
policy change in the handling of nonviolent drug offenders. The Substance
Abuse and Crime Prevention Act will divert low-level, nonviolent drug
possession offenders from prisons and into drug treatment and other
rehabilitation services, preserving needed prison space for the population
it was originally intended, violent criminals.

We believe that this is an opportunity for citizens to pass legislation
that truly is in the best interest of the majority, and that represents the
greater good for society.

Bergman is the co-director of PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment &
Healing) and the parent of two sons who have the disease of heroin
addiction. She can be reached via e-mail at gretchenb@abac.com. Beck-Brown
is an arts educator who has worked with convicts in county, state and
federal detention facilities. He can be reached via e-mail at
dbbrown@pacbell.net