PIMA county revelation: Drug treatment works better than prison!

This new, grant-funded program giving addicts alternatives to prison is fine and dandy, but why is it"news?" We've known this for decades: Treatment works for drug offenders; prison doesn't. No news there.

 And why does the county only do it with grant money, if $30K can be saved for every person who goes through it instead of prison? It  sounds like even though there's a 70-75% success rate, they will drop it and go back to wasting money sending addicts to prison (where only 4% will get ANY kind of drug treatment)  if they don't get more grants. GRR!!!
 
An even better solution would be to end the war on drugs and make health care (and thus drug treatment) accessible to all when needed - that would save a lot of lives and money right away...

----------------------

Rehab, not prison proves successful for some drug offenders, County says

Posted: Sep 20, 2013 3:52 PM Updated: Sep 20, 2013 4:37 PM  

By Paige Hansen PIMA COUNTY, AZ ( Tucson News Now) - 

 Pima County leaders are touting the benefits of a program that keeps some drug offenders out of prison. It is part of the changing attitude towards non-violent drug offenses.  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced he is expanding a federal effort to keep non-violent drug defendants from getting long prison terms.

The people behind the local program say Arizona's first "Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison" program or DTAP, is getting results, better than what they expected. A three-year grant to fund the program is up at the end of the month, and now the search is on for more funding to keep it going. One of the arguments for keeping, and expanding DTAP is that it costs less to put these sorts of offenders through a rehab program than it does to put them behind bars.

"Of course, it takes money to save money so we have to have the money to put into this program: $10,000 per participant to save $40,000," Amelia Cramer, the chief deputy Pima County attorney said. "It's going to cost Arizona taxpayers one way or the other."

According to a report conducted by an independent agency, Pima County spent at average of "approximately $10,000 to rehabilitate an individual DTAP participant who succeeds in the program, compared to a cost of more than $40,000 if that same individual had been incarcerated for the average sentence of two-and-a-half years," according to a news release sent by the county.

Michael Kennedy, 45 years old and a Tucson native says he has been to prison five times and started using drugs when he was 13 years old.

"People like me don't do what I do," Kennedy said of his subsequent recovery and graduation from the DTAP program. "People like me end up dead or in prison for the rest of their life."

Kennedy qualified for the DTAP program because he is a multiple-time offender, charged with a drug-related offense with no history of violent or sexual crimes. Kennedy says in the past, he would go to prison, get clean, then end up back to square one upon release.

"Then I get out," Kennedy said after saying he would use his time in prison to get off drugs. "I know that drugs is my problem so I get a job and I try to be a normal person, a productive person but yet I haven't dealt with what the problem is. The problem is me."

Kennedy said he started using drugs to feel better about himself. He says it started with weed, then coke and finally, heroin and meth. His addiction fueled his life of crime, he said. Kennedy said he stole for drugs and money.

"I should be dead, or I should be in prison for the rest of my life," Kennedy said. "And I'm not. Thank you God, thank you."

After years of living a life of crime, Kennedy says he is thankful for "normal." He says he has a job at a local car wash, pays taxes and has been sober for two years, seventeen days and counting.

The program is designed to reduce drug addiction and drug-related crime in Pima County. Cramer says going into the grant nearly three years ago, they anticipated a 40-percent success rate. The program turned out to be successful 70 to 75-percent of the time, Cramer said. 

The grant runs out at the end of the month but will continue in a smaller capacity until the county finds out whether it will be eligible for more funding either from the state or federal government. 

Pima County was funded for three years through one of 28 grants awarded nationwide by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Copyright 2013 Tucson News Now. All rights reserved.

Kingman Prison: Once upon a time.

(FYI: McCluskey and Welch arrested in AZ 8/19/10 post)

Looks like the priorities of Arizonans shifted in recent years from rehabilitating offenders to warehousing them again. Maybe if we didn't have so many petty offenders incarcerated in the state - and such high recidivism rates - there would have been more room for murderers so they wouldn't be putting the overflow in medium security private prisons dedicated to DUI and drug offenders.

It's now damn near impossible for prisoners who really need it to be placed in a meaningful substance abuse or mental health treatment unit - programs which, if they were accessible enough on the outside, may have prevented many from needing them on the inside. Now lifers and white supremacists occupy this place, and young addicts and burglars with just a few years to do are placed in massive state prisons with gangs and killers running them. What do we think we're teaching them there? Who will they be when they leave - if they survive?

College classes for AZ state prisoners, by the way, are reserved for those who can afford to pay for it themselves - funding for that was axed a long time ago, fueling the prison boom.

----------------------------

Prison outside Kingman at capacity of 472 Oct 14, 2004 By Marvin Robertson Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN – The Arizona State Prison facility southwest of Kingman has an inmate population unique in the state, Deputy Warden Clint Davis said.

“This is the first place I have worked where all the inmates were in for the same offense.” Davis said “I have always recommended non-violent first offenders be kept away from repeat offenders.”

The population at the facility near the Griffith power plant interchange in Interstate 40 is at current capacity of 472. Construction continues to add space for nearly another 1,000 inmates by April. Food service and administrative facilities are in temporary buildings. Davis said the prison population is older than he had expected for the driving under the influence sentences. Most are there for drinking and driving, although DUI could include drugs if the individual was picked up driving while “high,” Davis said.

The prison was quiet Monday, a holiday when some staff members who handle the educational programs were taking a break.

Many inmates were enjoying the warm Arizona October sun in the exercise yard. Some were still in their bunks sleeping past mid-morning. Others had their usual duties helping in the kitchen, cleaning floors and raking the exercise yard.

“Rocks seem to float to the surface here,” Davis said. “We continually rake the surface and remove them so they do not become weapons.”

Inmates can stay in the exercise yard most of the day if their assignments are completed. They walk, use the fitness stations and sit on benches in the warm sunshine. Volleyball and horseshoes (plastic not iron) will be added to the basketball courts now available. “The average length of stay is four to six months,” Davis said. “They take a basic six-week program followed by 16 hours of DUI education and treatment,” Davis said. “They then enter aftercare and have basic education and will have classes up to college available.”

Management Training Corp., a Utah company, operates the prison as a private facility for the Arizona Department of Corrections. As deputy warden, Davis is in charge of the educational programs.

“The MTC mission is ‘Success for Life,’” he said. The motto is “Preparing offenders for re-entry to society.”

“I know of no other private of public prison operation than MTC with that mission,” he said.

Half the inmates come without a high school education. The Department of Corrections requires that those who cannot pass a basic test of skills at the eighth-grade level to take basic education courses.

Davis said inmates who get some college classes or vocational training during first incarceration seldom return. With a college class, the return rate is 3 percent. With a vocation skill or trade, the return rate is 12 percent.

Without either, 85 percent of the inmates will return within five years. On average, those will spend 10 of the next 20 years behind bars at a total cost to the state of $250,000 for prison. By age 40, many stay out of prison. MTC now employees 120 people at the Kingman site. Another 150 employees will be added by April when the full 1,400 inmates are housed. Mohave Community College is recruiting employees for MTC and conducts training academies to train new employees.

Most of the employees live in Mohave County.

Justice, Drug Treatment, and US Veterans

Report: Vets need drug treatment, not jail

Navy Times

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 5, 2009 14:25:31 EST

Treatment, not incarceration, should be the first option for veterans who commit nonviolent drug-related offenses, a group advocating alternatives to the nation’s “war on drugs” said Wednesday in a new report.
The Drug Policy Alliance report also called on government agencies to adopt overdose prevention programs and policies for vets who misuse substances or take prescription medicines, and urged “significantly expanded” access to medication-assisted therapies, such as methadone and buprenorphine, for the treatment of dependence on opioid drugs used to treat pain and mood disorders.

During a conference call with a Drug Policy Alliance representative and seven other advocates for change in the treatment of veterans, the military’s Tricare health benefits program came under fire for what a New York-based physician and specialist in drug addiction treatment called its failure to pay for veterans’ and family members’ opioid dependence treatments.

The treatments, said Robert Newman of the Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute, are endorsed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Institute of Medicine.

Newman cited a 2008 speech by U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak in Hanoi, in which he acknowledged that U.S. dollars were being spent on methadone treatment for Vietnamese drug addicts.
“And yet, our government, our Department of Defense, has an insurance plan that simply excludes maintenance treatment,” Newman said. “I find that outrageous.”

According to the Tricare manual, “drug maintenance programs when one addictive drug is substituted for another on a maintenance basis [such as methadone substituted for heroin] are not covered.” Tricare spokesman Austin Camacho said this applies to all Tricare beneficiaries, including veterans and family members.

There are no solid numbers on how many veterans suffer from drug addiction — just as there are none that nail down the number of veterans currently in prison and county jails.

The Drug Policy Alliance says that substance abuse is the “single greatest predictive factor for the incarceration of veterans” and that without more effective treatment programs, veteran incarceration is likely to increase.

“The bottom line is, we don’t have accurate numbers,” said Dan Abrahamson, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance and the report’s co-author. “The data that we do have are outdated. Veterans are actually just getting lost as they come back home. They’re lost in the data sets, they’re lost in the reporting, they’re lost when agencies don’t ask them whether they’re veterans.”

Those close to the issue point out that about 30 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan war vets report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression or other mental illness or cognitive disability, and that 19 percent of veterans who have received care from the Veterans Affairs Department have been diagnosed with substance abuse or dependence.

Guy Gambill, an Army veteran and advocate for veterans’ rights who took part in the conference call, noted that one of the hallmarks of PTSD “is a tendency to self-medicate. People do that with drugs, people do that with alcohol.”

USA Today reported in June that the rate of Army soldiers diagnosed with alcoholism or alcohol abuse increased from 6.1 per thousand in 2003 to an estimated 11.4 as of March.

The Pentagon says that from Sept. 11, 2001, through August 2009, some 1,991,578 individual service members have been deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. It does not track how many of those served in the actual combat zones.

Gambill called for a dialogue between veterans service organizations, justice reform groups and the military to “formulate policy based on research” in an effort to avoid the widespread problems with drugs and incarceration experienced by many Vietnam-era veterans.

“If I could do anything here, it would be to exhort Congress to have the political courage to be smarter than the problem this time,” he said.

Juvenile Justice & Teen Substance Abuse

From Reclaiming futures.org, passed on by Lois at Real Cost of Prisons Project:

Reclaiming Futures Launches Blog Dedicated to Substance Abuse and Teens in the Juvenile Justice System

Reclaiming Futures Every Day is a professionally-staffed blog that aims to keep people informed of the latest happenings in juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment. Launched by Reclaiming Futures, an initiative
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, it can be found at http://blog.reclaimingfutures.org, and is designed to help readers:

   * Discuss the national challenge of helping teens break the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime.
   * Comment on new developments in teen alcohol and drug treatment and juvenile justice reform.
   * Stay in touch with what's going on in the 23 communities using the proven Reclaiming Futures approach.
   * Receive expert opinions and commentary from regular contributors who are leaders in the field.

Reclaiming Futures is an initiative created by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that offers a new approach to helping teenagers caught in the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime. Now in 23 communities across
the nation, the program has received additional investments to spread its model from RWJF, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and the Kate B.
Reynolds Charitable Trust. The national office of Reclaiming Futures is housed in the Regional Research Institute of the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University. For a list of our 23 locations
and more information, please visit www.reclaimingfutures.org.

Prisons not the answer to crime problems: Holder

August 3, 2009
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH
Political Reporter- Chicago Sun Times

More prisons are not the answer to America’s crime problems, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told the nation’s lawyers Monday.

“We will not focus exclusively on incarceration as the most effective means of protecting public safety,” Holder told the American Bar Association delegates meeting here for their annual convention. “Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened.”

Holder conceded that the massive build-up of prisons — a seven-fold increase over the past 40 years — probably has something to do with the crime rate dropping 40 percent since 1991.

“Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated — the highest incarceration rate in the world,” he said. But the country has reached a point of diminishing returns at which putting even greater percentages of America’s citizens behind bars won’t cut the crime rate.

That’s in part because once people spend time in prison, they’re likely to keep engaging in the kind of behavior that sends them back to prison, he said.

“Most crimes in America are committed by people who have committed crimes before,” Holder said. “About 67 percent of former state prisoners and 40 percent of former federal prisoners are re-arrested within three years of release. If we can reduce the rate of recidivism, we will directly reduce the crime rate.”

Prisoners who undergo drug treatment and/or work training in prison are 16 percent less likely to re-offend after their release, he said.

Diverting non-violent drug offenders away from prison and into treatment programs, as New York State does, saves taxpayers money, better rehabilitates offenders and helps reduce the crime rate, Holder said.

“Every state in the union is trying to trim budgets,” Holder said. “States and localities are laying off teachers, cutting back on public health, and canceling after-school programs for our children. But in almost all cases, spending on prisons continues to rise. This is unsustainable economically.”

Holder provoked applause from the delegates when he complained that across the country, state and local governments are under-funding public defenders, whose growing caseloads make it difficult for them to adequately represent their clients.

Holder did not speak on the delegates overwhelming voice vote to ask Congress to repeal part of the Defense Of Marriage Act that prevents same-sex partners receiving federal benefits even in states that have legalized gay marriage.

This and other news about mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/