The defeat of sentence 5 in California was a serious blow to the entire drug rehabilitation field. Whether they knew it or not, it was also a disastrous exit for the people of California. It was nothing more than a rude awakening to the destructive power of the Union, led astray from the Society it serves. The California Correspondent Association of the Officers of the World (Union) in California is the largest, richest, most powerful lobbying group in the state. Fixes are a makeshift industry in the California economy. KKPOV includes correctional officers of correctional institutions and parole agents, and the number of members is 30,000. They are well paid, greatly compensated by the advantages and similar to like-minded people. They are constantly lobbying the professional field of drug treatment.
California is introducing substance abuse or SAP programs in virtually every prison in the state. Some sources say that there are 33 prisons, some say that 36, but regardless of the number, they change regularly, because they build prisons, not colleges in California. In fact, there are more state prisons than state colleges, and this is not a small effort. More than 6,000 prisoners live in several California prisons. For example, San Quentin is one person with more than 6,000 prisoners and employs more than 900 correctional officers and more than 600 other employees. This is a really big business. And, having established these so-called “treatment programs” in each prison, they are now an integral part of the required number of employees. This at the same time makes CCPOA bigger and stronger. They have exceptional lawyers and feed a lot of dollars in the HMO, local economies and lobbying in Sacramento, the state capitol. This is power! The frightening problem is that they can keep SAP in business. Well, you may ask, why is this a problem? It's simple! SAP programs do not work.
The report, published February 21, 2007 by the State of California, the Inspector General’s Office, is strongly underlined in bold in the title: “Substance abuse treatment programs for women do not reduce recidivism, but cost the state $ 143 million a year.” In other words, as I said, they do not work. The following is a quote from the same study:
“Effective psychoactive substance abuse treatment offers one of the state’s best hopes for reducing the number of prisoners who are constantly moving into and out of prisons,” said inspector general Matthew Keith. “Successful treatment programs can reduce societal costs of criminal activities related to drug abuse, change lives, and help alleviate the state overcrowding crisis.
The report further states that “one five-year-old University of California at Los Angeles, after examining the state’s two largest prison programs, actually found that the 12-month rates of recidivism for prisoners who received prison treatment were slightly higher than in the control group. "
Another recent study by the University of California showed that 42 percent of California prisoners have a “high need” for alcoholism treatment, and 56 percent have a high need for drug treatment, and recidivism rates for California prisoners as a whole remain of the highest in the country.
Another recent study found that prisoners who received treatment in custody, followed by at least “90 days of postnatal care at the community level”, had significantly lower rates of recidivism than non-participants. It makes us wonder why we don’t send these addicts and alcoholics directly to community-based providers? This is what was proposed in proposal 5 of 2008. The facts that I just gave did not get into the public arena in support of Prop 5. The supporters did not have the means or I didn’t expect the resources to get detailed information to the voters! (You can find this document by performing an online search for the Office of the Inspector General, California, Government and looking for a study published February 21, 2007).
But CCPOA, followed by MADD (which I supported until this year), had the money to bombard people with a systematic diet of misinformation. They sounded convincingly as if this proposal was going to “massively” release Met and Track on the streets and in the communities of California. Proposition 5 is in fact the right, economically sound, safe solution to find a way to finance more effective community-based “treatment providers” in the field of substance abuse treatment. As in the case of “recognized success,” Prop 36, violent criminals would be excluded from participation, as well as people with criminal charges. But the Allied Corrections propaganda machine, CCPOA, sounded like a prison gate opened, and who ever decided to leave. The words of their television spots were in fact ridiculous, but based on the “fear” philosophy that the Bush administration has so well implemented for over 7 years. Guess what worked. People fell for it. I must say that the presence of MADD on board probably legitimized the entire campaign of terror. Very sorry!
On average, it costs more than $ 40,000 to imprison a prisoner for a year. FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS !!! They can participate in the community-based treatment program from $ 20 thousand to $ 30 thousand. Per year. What you really need to understand here is that these programs take only 90 days to reduce the rate of return to prison. If you put prisoners on treatment throughout the year, these numbers will gradually improve. In fact, drug treatment specialists believe that a full course of treatment for shorter periods of time can increase the effectiveness of their treatment in the range of 50 to 90 percent.
The “science of drug addiction” and its introduction into treatment programs over the past ten years have become a revolution in the knowledge of the “disease concept” of addiction and alcoholism. This disease has been recognized as a disease by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, for decades. Drug counseling certification agencies have moved to state universities and receive highly qualified professionals in the field of drug abuse counseling. But they are constantly challenged by the fields of medicine and psychiatry, because they are effective and are paid far less than a doctor or psychiatrist. This is money again. As in the case of prison staff, the wallets are discarded, so the protection mode begins. CAADAC, the California Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Advisors, has very high certification standards that can only be obtained by combining courses at the State University Drug and Alcohol Certification, Expansion Programs, and by passing both written and oral exams through the test board. Such agencies exist throughout the country. Many private or community treatment programs in California require CAADAC certification for a 4-year degree, while others require a combination of CAADAC and work experience instead of a degree. But the most effective community-based treatment, in which the overwhelming majority of these consultants work, does not have significant government funding. Almost all of this goes to an unsuccessful SAP prison.
Opponents of Proposition 5, in California, would have a big patch on their backs coming on their very effective campaign, if not for the fact that everything that was actually done was done by dedicated people who were paid specialists in the field of drug addiction treatment! This is a real shame for the misguided and old "criminals and punishments" of California lawyers ... taxpayers. California corrections have squandered a billion dollars since 1989 on prison programs that do not work, and the public remains in the shadow of the truth. But the real losers here are countless drug addicts and alcoholics and their families who are hospitalized rather than curing a disease that can be effectively arrested, which allows them to become "productive, taxpayers of the Society."
The effect of not rehabilitating people suffering from this terrible disease still achieves that it is truly heartbreaking. Families remain broken and dysfunctional when it is not necessary. This issue then extends to social security spending and overcrowded publicly funded psychiatric clinics. In hospitals that suffer financial failure, in their emergency departments, children and spouses from these families are overcrowded, who inevitably end up medical care, using the emergency department as their clinic. Because they remain a “burden on society” and not an asset, because the deprivation of liberty does not change the addict. They again insult and return to prison, where career criminals teach them how to become more criminal than ever if they were not exposed to the prison environment and population. “Genetically speaking addicts” children witness all behaviors and follow the traces of their dependent parent, because the combination of genetics and the environment almost certainly dooms them.
Proposal 5 could be the beginning of a turn for California and, perhaps, helped the rest of the country to follow suit, after all. But an organization that wanted overtime and government benefits for its members, which is also the largest and most powerful union in the state, lobbied, bought and sold California residents in the dark spirit of greed, suppressing the truth of justice and hope, conducting a propaganda campaign that misinformed and introduced people astray in a very serious mistake. Along with human suffering and loss, we will spend more than 140 million dollars each year, until we stop doing the same thing over and over again, waiting for a different result!
