Pubdate: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 Source: Royal Gazette, The (Bermuda) Copyright: 2003 The Royal Gazette Ltd. Contact: http://www.theroyalgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2103 DRUGS TREATMENT Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes talks in today's newspaper about the success New York City has had in cutting crime. He attributes that success to the introduction of sentencing rules that require people with drugs convictions to undergo long-term residential treatment programmes. "We had 750 murders a year and 170,000 index crimes, which are the seven most serious types of crime like murder, rape, grand theft auto," he said of New York crime in 1990. "But now there are just 240 murders and under 60,000 serious crimes a year and it's related directly to the reduction of drugs in our community." Of course, it has been said that victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan, and the dramatic decline in New York crime has been attributed to many people and programmes. But Mr. Hynes must be right that reduced drug abuse has a direct correlation to reduced crime. It also makes sense that long-term residential treatment programmes will have more success in helping drug abusers to get clean and to stay clean. Bermuda has only two or three residential programmes and none last longer than 90 days. Two of the facilities, Fair Haven and Camp Spirit, have had their share of controversy in recent years. Another residential halfway house, Jerry's House, never got off the ground, largely as a result of neighbourhood protests. But if the Alternatives to Incarceration scheme is to work then Mr. Hynes' comments should be taken seriously. The premise of the New York Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison Programme - - that defendants would return to society in a better position to resist drugs and crime after treatment than if they had spent a comparable time in prison at nearly twice the cost - is the same as ATI, which aims to stop the entrance to Westgate being a revolving door. To be sure, drugs are so insidious, and human nature so weak, that not all people will emerge from a programme drug-free, no matter how long it is. But for many people, 90 days is just not long enough to give them the tools and the strength to stay clean. And there are many criminals who are sentenced to much longer than 15 months or two years who would benefit from a longer (and cheaper) programme outside of prison. Drug Court Coordinator Calvin Ming rightly points out the major challenges for long term treatment programmes. Costs - which would inevitably be higher than Brooklyn - would be a factor. But the costs of not doing something of this kind are immeasurably greater: More people going in and out of prison, more crime, more illness, more deaths. Nor is there any doubt that the not-in-my-backyard (Nimby) syndrome would be a major stumbling block. But the fact is that Fair Haven did not face major neighbourhood protests when it moved to Smith's Parish and there are thousands of people who have been affected directly or indirectly by the damage that drugs inflicts. Surely there would be enough to override the concerns of those who would oppose it. Bermuda has missed opportunities in the past to really deal with the drugs problem. And there have been plenty of "foreign experts" telling Bermuda how to solve the problem. Mr. Hynes may be foreign, but in this case he is right and Bermuda should heed his advice. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens