Pubdate: Wed, 6 Jan 1999 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 1999 The Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com:81/webx Author: New York Times News Service STUDY FINDS LESS DRUG AID FOR PRISONERS The proportion of new prison inmates who were drug users at the time of their arrest increased this decade, while drug treatment in state and federal prisons fell sharply, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Justice Department. "What is particularly tragic," said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, "is that drug treatment in prison, where it can be coerced, has proven to be effective as an anti-crime program. "This is an unintended consequence of prison expansion," Mr. Rosenfeld said in an interview. "Each time we spend a dollar on building a new prison or expanding an existing one, it is one less dollar for drug treatment." Also Tuesday, President Clinton announced that he would propose $215 million in his next budget for testing and treating prisoners for drug use. About $115 million is currently budgeted for combating drug use by prisoners, parolees and probationers. "We have to break this cycle," Mr. Clinton said. "We have to give these people a chance to be drug-free and to be productive citizens again." The anti-drug proposal had been planned for some time as a significant part of Mr. Clinton's overall anti-crime strategy, White House aides said. Anticipating bad news in the Justice Department report, they timed its announcement for Tuesday in hopes of blunting the report's impact. The new study, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, reported that the proportion of state inmates who had been drug users before arrest - that is, had used drugs in the previous month - rose to 57 percent in 1997 from 50 percent in 1990, as the proportion among federal inmates increased to 45 percent from 32 percent. The increase in drug use by prisoners in state and federal prisons in the period leading up to their crimes appears to be the result of increased attention by both law-enforcement officials and legislators to drugs, singling out drug users for more arrests and giving them longer sentences if they have a history of drug involvement, the experts said. The Justice Department report underscored the strong link between drug use and criminality, finding that 83 percent of inmates in state prisons and 73 percent of those in federal prisons had used drugs at some point in their lives. The Justice Department report also found that more violent crimes were committed by people who had been drinking alcohol than by those under the influence of drugs. - --- MAP posted-by: Patrick Henry