No: swift and sure sanctions work better

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 1995 | by David Boyum

Crime, public opinion polls reveal, is now the nation's No. 1 concern, and everyone agrees that drugs are partly to blame. In inner-city neighborhoods, drug dealers shoot each other - and, on occasion, innocent bystanders - while heavy drug users (many of whom also are sellers) are responsible for the bulk of predatory crime. In Manhattan, for instance, more than three-quarters of those arrested test positive for the recent use of illicit drugs; in few major cities is the proportion less than half.

Politicians certainly have been attentive to public anxiety about crime. Last year, Congress enacted with much fanfare the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the largest crime bill in the country's history. If authorized funds are appropriated fully during the next five years, the act will provide $8.8 billion for 100,000 new police officers in community policing programs, $9.7 billion for prisons and other correctional facilities, $6.1 billion for a variety of crime-prevention programs and an additional $2.6 billion for federal enforcement agencies and courts.

Also included in the act are a host of criminal provisions ranging from the ban on assault weapons to "three strikes and you're out" sentencing to new laws against insurance and tele-marketing fraud. However, with the exception of $1 billion for drug courts and $383 million for prison-based drug-treatment programs, there is little in the crime bill that directly addresses the all-important drugs-crime connection.

There are perhaps 3 million heavy cocaine and heroin users in the United States and, for most of this group, chronic intoxication makes legitimate employment next to impossible. Criminal activity is thus the primary means of support for their hundreds-of-dollars-per-week habits, which in turn undergird the lucrative and violent drug trade. It follows then that substantially reducing drug use among offenders is key to making a dent in the nation's crime problem.

The problem is how to bring about this reduction. Although the three basic strategies that comprise current drug policy - treatment, enforcement and prevention - have played an role in the decline in middle-class drug use during the last decade, it is doubtful that any of these approaches can bring about a major decrease in hard-core addiction.

This is partly because drug policy typically is framed as a matter of supply reduction vs. demand reduction. Indeed, federal law requires an accounting of the federal drug-control budget in those terms; in a time of fiscal austerity any new funding for one type of drug policy is likely to come at the expense of another. By robbing Peter to pay Paul, it is easy to undermine the anticipated benefits of the new spending. Consider a shift in resources from enforcement to treatment, long advocated by many treatment experts. A key problem with such a move is that many drug-addicted offenders will only enter treatment programs if coerced; simple availability of such programs often is not a sufficient enticement. And drug enforcement and the criminal-justice system are the most powerful mechanisms for getting drug-addicted offenders into treatment; the difficulty, risk and expense of buying drugs can convince users that maintaining their habits is too costly, and courts can offer or compel treatment as a condition of parole or probation.

But even setting aside for a moment the fiscal restraints on drug policy, it still is unlikely that additional treatment, enforcement or prevention efforts will deal successfully with the problem of hard-core drug abuse.

Most studies of drug treatment find that participation in treatment programs is associated with declines in reported drug use and criminal behavior, both during and after treatment. Based on such before-and-after comparisons, many researchers have concluded that drug-treatment programs are the most cost-effective approach to reducing heavy drug use. As Jonathan Caulkins points out, RAND determined that each additional dollar spent on treatment of heavy cocaine users would return $7 in social benefits and cost savings, mostly through reduced crime. By contrast, the report estimated that additional investment in enforcement-based programs (such as crop eradication, interdiction and domestic drug enforcement) would generate benefits less than their costs.

The conclusions of the RAND study (and other similar cost-benefit analyses) are, however, compromised by a glaring weakness: The drug-treatment studies on which they base their findings did not employ properly selected control groups. Without such control groups - that is, without samples of similar drug users who did not receive treatment - it is impossible to know how much of any improved behavior among treatment participants is attributable to treatment as opposed to other factors.

For example, some improvement may be due to aging, since most heavy drug users outgrow their habits over time. Self-selection also may be part of the story. Addicted offenders generally enter treatment programs when their up-and-down cycle of drug use and crime is at a peak. Thus, subsequent reductions in drug use and crime may, in part, represent a return to more typical behavior. Moreover, the decision to enter treatment involves an attempt to reduce one's drug use, a decision that might produce gains even without treatment. Addiction counselors often say that admission is the first step on the road to recovery. If so, then anyone who enrolls in treatment already has made progress. More generally, those who choose to enter treatment may, because of their personalities or circumstances, be better candidates for treatment success than those who do not.