Drug Reform California Style

California's Proposition 36, a state voter initiative designed to divert 36,000 small-time drug offenders a year from incarceration to treatment, passed overwhelmingly last November. Drug reformers hailed the bill as a landmark move but, as with all legislation, the devil is in the details. When it was inaugurated on July 1, each of the state's 58 counties was charged with drafting its own implementation plan. Because control is localized, some counties are still emphasizing punishment over treatment.

At least that's the case made by the Lindesmith Center - Drug Policy Foundation, one of the main Prop. 36 proponents. In late June, the private, non-profit reform organization released a formal assessment of 11 California counties, containing 75% of the state's population, are implementing Prop. 36. The assessment uses a traditional 'A' through 'F' letter grading system. While some counties go to the head of the class -- primarily San Francisco and San Mateo -- San Bernardino received a failing grade, and Sacramento, San Diego and Santa Clara just squeaked by.

The Lindesmith Center judged the counties based on whether they followed the "will of the voters." That is, do the counties approach first- or second-time drug offenders with a public health model, or is the criminal justice tail wagging the treatment dog? The counties that got a Lindesmith 'A' or 'B,’ including Alameda, Orange and Los Angeles, sought to remove drug offenders from the criminal justice system. Counties get low grades when too much money was devoted to supervision through their probation departments.

The struggle over divvying up $660 million over the next five years in guaranteed, locked box state funds is as basic as it gets. "This is a fight over money and jobs and operational control, yes," said Lindesmith's Prop. 36 implementation director, Whitney A. Taylor. "A shift of resources from one official body to another, from law enforcement to public health."

Chronically under-funded probation departments have requested up to two-thirds of Prop. 36 monies, though they typically have marginal oversight of non-violent users. Similarly under-funded treatment providers are eager to slice the pie otherwise, mindful that one traditional way for them to access funds has been to get into bed with the criminal justice system. Speaking at the annual Lindesmith conference, held this June in Albuquerque, Dorsey Nunn, program director of San Francisco's Legal Services for Prisoners with Children declared, "That half-a-billion dollars -- it doesn't belong to the police. I don't care if the cops ever get new police cars."

California Governor Gray Davis opposed the initiative and adopted a hands-off approach after its passage, despite the fact that California's drug incarceration rate (115 per 100,000 population) is more than twice the national average. Given that incarceration costs some $24,000 a year while treatment averages $4,000, diverting 36,000 offenders annually will provide an estimated $1.5 billion savings in the law enforcement and corrections budgets over the program's five-year life. (There's also a projected one-time, $500-million savings from not having to build a new prison.)

Despite the large savings, there's been much grumbling at the county level that the $660 million will prove insufficient to the task. Dell Sayles-Owen, deputy director of California's Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs (ADP) admitted that the state doesn’t know in an "empirical way" how much will be needed to effectively implement Prop. 36, "and there are fears among some of our stakeholders in the counties that it won't be enough."

The state ADP department provided scant concrete guidance in drafting the plans, though it did subsequently approve them. Given the regulatory vacuum, each of California's 58 counties was free to divvy up its share of the money. Taylor stated, "The state ADP took such a hands-off approach, we basically have 58 different plans. Even a simple state cap on the percentage allocated for non-treatment expenses would have been worthwhile."