Because using and possessing some drugs is illegal, drug addicts are often thrown in jail before they get treatment for their addiction — even if the only law they broke was using and possessing the drug.
On Wednesday morning, the House Appropriations Committee heard some simple advice from an expert: Stop doing that.
In fact, said John Perry, who retired last year as director of planning for the Vermont Department of Corrections, sending hard-core drug addicts directly to treatment instead of prison could save the state’s taxpayers roughly $4 million a year.
Perry briefed the lawmakers on a study he conducted for Maple Leaf Farm of Underhill, a private, nonprofit, residential treatment center for severe alcoholics and drug addicts. With 41 beds, Maple Leaf treats more than 800 men and women a year. Last year, Perry’s report said, 70 percent of them completed their treatments, which takes about a month.
Perry found that the addicts who were locked up before their treatment — even for only a couple of months — were far more likely to run afoul of the law later and be sent back to prison.
In fact, the percentage of Maple Leaf clients who had been incarcerated before their treatment were almost twice as likely to be incarcerated afterward as were the clients who had not experienced pre-treatment incarceration.
Only 38.9 percent of the addicts who went right into treatment without having been incarcerated for the three previous years were in the corrections system during the three years following their treatments. But 72.8 percent of the patients who had served time during the three years before going to Maple Leaf Farm ended up in jail within three years of finishing their treatments.
“The effect of incarceration,” Perry said, “overwhelms the treatment effect.”
Either the courts, the police and the prosecutors are doing an incredibly good job of prediction, and putting exactly the right people in jail, or prison is criminogenic.”
John Perry
By not incarcerating these addicts, Perry said, the state saves twice: First by not keeping them in jail to begin with; second by having to imprison fewer of them later thanks to the lower rate of recidivism.
Of course, the treatment costs money, but the incarceration saving more than pays for the treatment. Besides, Perry said, much of the treatment gets federal funds. The incarceration savings, he said, “come right out of the General Fund.”
The committee members seemed receptive to Perry’s recommendations, perhaps because they are looking for every opportunity to save money, or perhaps because Perry’s approach is consistent with Gov. Peter Shumlin’s goal of imprisoning fewer non-violent offenders.
In fact, Perry released his study in the context of the committee’s consideration of S.108, “the war on recidivism act.” Sponsored by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill is the vehicle for implementing one of Shumlin’s major policy proposals, one he regularly spoke about during last year’s campaign.
The bill, which passed the Senate last week and appears likely to be approved by the House, creates mechanisms under which some non-violent offenders can be “released on reintegration furlough” or sentenced to home confinement. It also establishes a “nonviolent misdemeanor sentence review committee to propose alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent, low-risk misdemeanor offenses.”
Similar policies have been followed in several other states, with some evidence that they help non-violent offenders escape the conditions that impelled them into criminal activity while at the same time saving money. Incarceration is expensive, costing $149 per day per inmate, according to Perry’s report.
Shumlin hopes to use some of the savings to finance more pre-school education in the state.
Perry said he was not at all surprised that his study demonstrated the efficacy of Maple Leaf Farm’s treatment programs.
“Treatment works,” he said. “We all know that.”
What surprised him, he said, was the strong correlation between lack of incarceration and the low rate of recidivism. To his knowledge, he said no other study in the country had demonstrated this connection.
It means, he told the committee somewhat wryly, that “either the courts, the police and the prosecutors are doing an incredibly good job of prediction, and putting exactly the right people in jail, or prison is criminogenic.”
That’s jargon, he later explained, but a real word. Just as a carcinogenic substance causes cancer, a criminogenic experience causes crime.
“Prison is criminogenic,” he said.
That assessment does not mean that either Perry or S. 108 does not recognize the necessity of imprisoning violent offenders or lawbreakers who commit other serious crimes. The bill limits the alternatives to incarceration to those judged to pose “a low risk to public safety or victim safety,” and lists 24 nonviolent offenses — ranging from cruelty to animals to assault of a correctional officer to boating under the influence of alcohol and drugs — for which offenders would not be eligible for home confinement or the other alternative sentences.
Based on Perry’s report, Maple Leaf Farms runs an effective program but does not perform miracles. Even many of the patients who complete their treatment find themselves back in the facility for a second and even a third go-round.
And as the results show, while the patients who were not incarcerated before their treatment are far more likely to stay out of trouble than those who were, more than a third of this relatively successful group later gets in trouble with the law.
Bill Young, Maple Leaf Farm’s executive director, said the facility takes on only non-violent patients who suffer from severe addiction. While Maple Leaf Farm began as a refuge for alcoholics, Young said most of its patients now are addicted to opiates, some to heroin, but of late even more to the painkiller OxyContin.
