The drug-bust boom: Addicts crowd state prisons

On a cool, crisp morning last November, Odis Holt, a 35-year-old newcomer from Southern California, woke up in a dingy Seattle flophouse and vowed to start a new life free of crack. He had spent two days scouring local charities for clothes to make himself more presentable as a job candidate. Walking rain-washed downtown streets in a pair of khakis and a blue down jacket, Holt vowed he would never land himself in prison again. But a quick high was tempting, and Seattle Police were waiting with fresh bait.

That day, court records say, Holt slipped into a back alley, swapped a small wad of paper with another transient and got himself arrested for helping an undercover officer score $40 worth of rock cocaine. Using a sophisticated buy-bust operation, Seattle Police arrest hundreds like Holt every year. Holt, a repeat drug offender, was sentenced last week to five years in prison. The nation is obsessed by violent and brutal crimes, but small-time drug addicts are often the ones occupying valuable court time and prison beds. Between 1989 and 1992, more people were sent to state prisons nationwide for drug offenses than for all violent crimes. Drug offenders are the fastest-growing population in Washington prisons.

Many judges and lawyers are deeply troubled by the trend and say low-level drug cases are clogging the judicial system without putting much of a dent in crime. But police officials and neighborhood leaders say drug enforcement is just as important now as a decade ago, when spawned as President Reagan's war on drugs. Republican prosecutors and lawmakers in Washington state, however, are starting to do what for so long was unthinkable: Ease up on lengthy prison sentences for drug addicts and provide more treatment. The state Senate on Friday approved House Bill 1549, a proposal by the state Sentencing Guidelines Commission to give judges the flexibility to cut sentences in half for first time drug offenders and order drug rehabilitation and community supervision. The bill, approved recently by the GOP-controlled House, marks the first major change in statewide drug enforcement since the 1989 Drug Omnibus Act. Last summer, King County initiated a drug-diversion court program for first-time offenders under the guidance of Republican Prosecutor Norm Maleng. "We have to open up some prison beds, and this is one way to do it," said Rep. Ida Ballasiotes, R- Mercer Island, who sponsored the House bill. "It's not that these guys shouldn't be serving time in prison, but this is a very expensive way to punish them."

Rehab would be cheaper

The sentence reductions would apply only to low-level cocaine and heroin users and dealers who have no prior felony convictions, who are caught with small amounts of drugs and who use no deadly weapons. Few will declare the war on drugs a lost cause, but it's a pricey one.

Housing a nonviolent drug addict I like Holt in prison, for example, costs $19,300 a year, not much less than the $24,500 a year for a murderer. That would put at least four people through a state-funded six-month drug and rehabilitation program, including inpatient and outpatient services and slots in a recovery house. And at a time when the cost of incarceration has moved to the forefront of the debate on crime - putting pressure on politicians to stay tough on criminals without raising taxes -Republicans are inclined to put money where the violence is.

George Pataki, New York's hardcharging GOP governor, drew national headlines last winter when he fought to restore the death penalty there. He also wants to scrap New York's 22-year-old menu of long prison sentences for drug offenders. Maleng, a prospective gubernatorial candidate, staunchly opposed drug sentencing-reform proposals for years as ill-conceived efforts to clear out the prisons. Now he calls drug treatment "a tough-minded approach."

Dave LaCourse, the main proponent behind the "Hard Time for Armed Crime" initiative, even advocates a more controversial proposal - giving judges back the power to waive prison time for nonviolent, first-time drug offenders in exchange for treatment. Doing so, he says, would make it easier for him to respond to critics who worry about the expense of imprisoning gun-toting criminals for longer stretches. To Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based research group that favors changes in drug laws, the Republican conversion is ironic. Democrats have promoted sentencing alternatives for years.

"The Republicans have an ability to do what's right because they don't have to worry about being accused of being soft on crime," Mauer said. "With state budgets being what they are these days, they realize they have to make some hard choices."

Prisons are overflowing with drug users and street dealers.

Nationally, the number of people convicted for drug offenses increased fivefold from 57,975 in 1983 to 304,304 in 1991. In Washington, drug offenders have ballooned from 4 percent to 25 percent of the state's roughly 11,000 inmates in the past eight years. The Department of Corrections in Olympia is surveying all 13 prisons to learn more about drug offenders, such as how many were addicted and what crimes they committed. What Corrections knows already is that the vast majority aren't highrolling "Miami Vice" kingpins. Often, they are small-time addicts like Holt, who sell drugs to support their habits.

Predatory and dangerous criminals are being incarcerated in larger numbers, a result mainly of "Three Strikes You're Out" and other new anti-violence laws. But drug cases have become so prevalent in the King County Courthouse that a third of all trials involve drug violations.

Dealing cocaine or heroin brings 21 months to 27 months in prison. Those terms go up dramatically for repeat offenses, especially those in "drug-free zones," within 1,000 feet of a school. And with the exception of marijuana and methamphetamine cases - and King County's court program - judges are supposed to follow state sentencing guidelines. This has stirred such deep frustration among judges that some are leading the push for reform.

Ricardo Martinez, a Superior Court judge and former drug prosecutor who presides over the county's Drug Court, says that, too often, drug users serve lengthy terms and are released into the community just as addiction-prone as the day they walked in. "It's frightening to see what drugs can do to a neighborhood, but we should understand the dynamics of how and why it happens," he said. "Unless we're smarter at dealing with the underlying disease, it (drug related crime) will never go away."

Odis Holt has been trying to stay off crack for four years, without much success. He has a string of drug-related convictions that began in Kern County, California in March 1991, when he was arrested for burglary and possession of a cocaine pipe. Born and raised by a single mother in St. Louis, Holt once thought about becoming a biochemist but, after earning college degrees in parapsychology and psychology, strayed into trouble early. Low-paying jobs as a janitor and print-shop worker are about the extent of his resume. As he remembers it, his introduction to cocaine came on the streets of Bakersfield, a hitchhiking stop on the way to Seattle.

"It just got to the point where I fell in the wrong crowd," Holt says now, sitting in the King County Jail. "It's like, I'm standing there and somebody says, 'Take a puff, man.' As the old saying goes, one puff is not enough and a thousand is too many . . . I substituted cocaine for my life." Holt says he started selling small amounts of crack to support his habit and pay for a bus ticket out of town. He got arrested instead. He is, in his attorney's view, now a transient. "What he really needs is treatment," said Patrick Dowd, a public defender with the Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons in Seattle. "I've seen a lot of other people in court who would probably pose a danger to society. But a lot of others like Odis aren't criminals, other than having an addiction." He and other defense attorneys see buy-busts as ineffective and unfair. While police and federal agents also pursue large-scale narcotics trafficking, most arrests are on the street, where offenders tend to be poor and nonwhite.

In 1989, three-quarters of drug offenders convicted in the state were white. Today, 43 percent are minorities. "They're going after easy pickings," complained Brian Tsuchida, felony supervisor for the Public Defender Association. "If you're a middle-class person and using cocaine in your nice house, the police have no reason to come knocking on your door. But if you're on the street, you're very visible." Still, drugs and neighborhood crime are frequently linked.

Law-enforcement perspective

As far as police are concerned, Holt is part of a bigger problem - crime in downtown Seattle. "We're dealing with people that are literally holding areas of downtown hostage by a conduct that goes well beyond drugs," said Capt. Clark Kimerer, outgoing commander of Seattle's West Precinct. "The fact is, these are chronic offenders, and at some point the system has a responsibility to say, other means are exhausted and removing the cancer is our only alternative." He makes no apologies for the ; financial cost of anti-drug laws. Police, after all, embarked on anti-drug operations because downtown and inner-city communities implored them to in the late 1980s.

Today, the Capitol Hill precinct is home base for the department's "buy-bust" operation, which generates half of all drug arrests in the city, just over 1,000 every year. A seven-person team stakes out various areas of downtown Seattle more than 100 times a year, looking for evidence of street sales. Kimerer says it targets known problem areas, such as the park near Pike Place Market, the Public Safety Building and Second Avenue and Yesler, where Holt was caught.

"We're not taking out the French Connection by any means," Kimerer said. "But I really believe that when you disrupt the market, you disrupt the patterns of distribution. ... There's a finite number of drug dealers, and at some point we're going to find the bottom of the well." For residents and business owners in the Denny Regrade, the police anti-drug effort was one of many factors that spawned the neighborhood's economic rebirth. "The problem hasn't disappeared, but it's definitely improved," said Tom Graff, president of the Denny Regrade Business Association. "What we do with these people after they're arrested is a separate issue. All I know is that our community cannot function with it. It keeps people locked away in their homes and it makes everyone feel unsafe." King County and the state of Washington have spent at least $14,701 arresting and prosecuting and jailing Holt. During a three-day trial, seven police officers, a city engineer, a school administrator, a business owner and a state lab technician testified against him. The state will spend up to another $100,000 to keep him in prison.

What legislation would do

With House Bill 1549, the state hopes to save $12.6 million by the year 2001 and open up 205 prison beds by 1998. 'We have to open up some prison beds, and this is one way to do it. It's not that these guys shouldn't be serving time in prison, but this a very expensive way to punish them. ' State Rep. Ida Balusiotes, R-Mercer Island, Sponsor of a bill allowing reduced sentences for drug offenders It calls for upgraded community based rehabilitation designed by the state Department of Social and Health Services.

The Department of Corrections already provides a limited form of treatment in prison. But classes are mostly informational, and prison officials acknowledge there's no statistical evidence the 12- week programs have been effective. Regardless of the Republican legislation, Corrections says new prison treatment will begin in July that includes close supervision and professional counseling, as well as tracking an inmate's progress. There's also a new component-assisting inmates once they re-enter the community, known as "aftercare." The department expects the program to serve 2,500 drug offenders a year. DOC is also experimenting with acupuncture for first-time drug offenders at Pine Lodge Corrections Center in Spokane County. "One of our weakest links is meeting the needs of offenders in the community," said Patty Terry, the department's chemical-treatment coordinator. "We have a lot of guys and gals who get out of prison, and the biggest problem is for them to stay clean and sober."

Researchers argue that court-ordered treatment is the best solution to addiction, a view that's increasingly supported by judges and lawmakers. They point to success rates of the state program under the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Treatment Act, which serves l,800 low-income drug users, parents with children and pregnant women. A recent review found that half of those who completed the six-month program and received some vocational training found steady work. Another study showed that 69 percent of recovering drug and alcohol addicts who completed treatment in Yakima were substance-free. But it often takes more than one course of treatment before an offender can successfully avoid relapses, and supporters worry whether there will be enough money to support the proposed sentencing alternatives. House Republicans are offering to pay about half the projected $845,000 cost for community- based treatment in the first two years, while Senate Democrats haven't figured any of the costs into their budget. And both chambers are proposing significant cuts in funding for treatment already provided in prison. For Holt, meanwhile, the next few years are bleak. With "good time" earned in prison, the earliest he could get out is about 3 ½ years. He says it's easier dealing with his addiction in a jail cell than trying to say no to drugs on the street. But he also has no illusions about his role in the drug trade and the fact that it's probably prospering without him. "I was gone a good 30 seconds before someone else took my place," Holt said. "They say this law is l supposed to put away drug dealers, but 60 percent of the time, they catch the minnows."

Source: RefillPill.com Editors' Choice