At last year’s graduation ceremony of Brooklyn’s Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison (or “DTAP”) program, a successful participant told the audience:


Another graduate, a forty-four-year-old who now works as a traffic flagger for an electrical company, confided that he had been in and out of jail since he was eleven and had never thought he could ever stay clean and sober.  Year after year, at DTAP graduations, we hear of such men and women who, having spent five, ten, sometimes twenty years of their lives incarcerated -- half a lifetime behind bars –- finally acquired the strength and tools they needed to land a job and remain drug-free.  These were people who had hurt themselves, their families, and their communities with criminal conduct driven by a voracious drug habit.  But now they could stand proudly before an audience which included police officers who had arrested them, assistant district attorneys who had prosecuted them, and judges who had sentenced them, and look them straight in the eye as productive citizens of Brooklyn.  

Why did we, as a society, not reach out to these people sooner?  Why were they locked up again and again, even though imprisonment seemed to have little long-term deterrent effect?  The quick response from members of the law enforcement community, including prosecutors, is usually pretty simple:  Because these addicts posed a threat to public safety.  Their drug-related criminal activity was damaging our communities and we had to incapacitate them by locking them away.  

While incarceration might have once seemed a reasonable short-term solution for this non-violent, drug-addicted population, it was, and is, in fact, misguided.  As many jurisdictions have come to realize, incarceration is extremely expensive.  Additionally, pouring money into corrections siphons funds from other critical social services.  Research shows that between 1985 and 2004, states increased their spending on corrections at a far greater rate than on other social services such as Medicaid, education, transportation, and public assistance.  

Further, following their release, many drug-addicted offenders, propelled by their untreated addiction, either commit new crimes (often drug offenses) or violate the terms of their parole, and end up returning to prison.  This vicious cycle of substance abuse, drug-related crime, and re-incarceration takes a terrible toll on the individual and the community, and drains the public coffers.  

In the 1980s, the crack-cocaine epidemic and a growing demand for heroin devastated New York City.  In New York, sentences of mandatory imprisonment ensured that even dealers who were selling small amounts of drugs to support their habits spent years incarcerated.  Prison populations were exploding, but drug crime did not appear to be decreasing.  In 1985, there were 2,218 commitments to New York State prisons for felony drug offenses -- about 18% of all new court commitments that year.  By 1990, that number had more than quadrupled to 10,784 –- about 47% of all the new court commitments.  The vast majority of the drug offenders in prison were substance abusers, and many of them were repeat felons.  

Faced with this crisis when first elected in 1989, I concluded that I had a responsibility to explore new strategies to increase public safety.  Research indicated that the threat of a prison sentence could be used successfully to pressure drug-addicted offenders to enter and stay in treatment.  Collaborating with community-based treatment providers, the judiciary, the defense bar, probation, and parole, my office launched the Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison (DTAP) program in the fall of 1990.  

DTAP is the nation’s first prosecutor-run program that diverts substance-abusing, nonviolent repeat felony offenders away from prison and into drug treatment.  These offenders, who combine the desperation of the chronic drug user with the demonstrated propensity to reengage in criminal behavior despite previous periods of incarceration, present a higher risk to public safety than an offender charged with drug possession as a misdemeanor or first felony.  At the same time, it is precisely from the successful treatment of this group that society stands the most to gain.   Under DTAP’s current structure, prosecutors carefully screen cases to determine whether the defendants meet eligibility criteria and to exclude violent offenders and major drug traffickers.  Candidates then receive a clinical assessment.  Defendants may or may not be facing drug charges; the key is whether they are drug addicted.  Defendants accepted for the program plead guilty to a felony charge with the understanding that a specific prison term will be imposed in the event of treatment failure.  The sentence is deferred while the defendant undergoes 15-24 months of intensive, residential treatment in a therapeutic community.  Compliance is carefully monitored, and the prosecutor and court receive frequent treatment progress updates.  The District Attorney’s Warrant Enforcement Team returns to court those participants who abscond from the treatment facility.  Because relapse often occurs during the recovery process, DTAP has a selective readmission policy for those who express a genuine desire to continue treatment and pose no threat to the provider or community.  If the defendant successfully completes treatment, the charges are dismissed.  Because employment is so important to the ongoing sobriety and social stability of the DTAP participant, the program has a Business Advisory Council, an employment specialist, and a job developer.  As of May 1, 2007, 2,493 defendants had been accepted into the program since its inception; 1,013 had completed the program and had had their charges dismissed; and 389 were still in treatment.  (For further information on DTAP, see DTAP’s Sixteenth Annual Report, available at http://www.brooklynda.org ).  

The NationalCenter on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at ColumbiaUniversity, conducted a five-year evaluation of DTAP.  According to CASA’s findings, DTAP participants (dropouts and graduates) are 67% less likely to return to prison two years after leaving the program than are comparable individuals two years after leaving prison.  And if one looks at just the DTAP graduates, they are 87% less likely to return to prison than comparable non-diverted individuals.  DTAP graduates are also three and one-half times likelier to be employed than they were before their arrest.  These results are achieved at half the cost of incarceration.  

Now, several district attorneys throughout New YorkState, including all those in New York City, have implemented DTAP programs.  These programs are complemented by the presence of drug courts.  New YorkStat’s first drug court opened in 1995 (five years after DTAP’s launch), and these courts currently exist in every county of the state.  Drug courts, like DTAP, use the threat of incarceration –- “legal coercion” -– and careful monitoring to encourage offenders to stay in treatment.  However, because repeat felony offenders pose a greater risk to the community than misdemeanants or first-time felony offenders, it makes sense for this predicate population to be diverted into treatment by participating in DTAP, rather than a drug court.  The prosecution’s involvement in the DTAP program, the use of the warrant enforcement team to return absconders, and the program’s exclusive reliance on intensive residential treatment all combine to ensure that the risk to public safety is kept at a minimum.

Recently, two well-respected voices have advocated a re-assessment of how our society uses incarceration to deal with crime, especially drug crime.  The Vera Institute of Justice published in January, 2007, a report by Don Stemen, Reconsidering Incarceration: New Directions for Reducing Crime, which cogently concludes that policymakers should “look beyond incarceration for alternative policies that not only may be able to accomplish the important task of protecting public safety, but may do so more efficiently and more effectively.”  And Joseph A. Califano, Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and now chairman and president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, in his new book, High Society, calls for a “top-to-bottom restructuring of the nation’s criminal justice systems” and a “revolution” in how we view crime and punishment.  “We must take steps,” he insists, “to ensure that offenders who are likeliest to become sober citizens enter treatment, that they stay there long enough, and that they maintain their sobriety.”  

I urge my fellow prosecutors to join in this rallying cry.  Between 1970 and 2005, state and federal authorities increased prison populations by 628 percent, but many states are now realizing that we cannot prison-build ourselves to a safer society.  And because public safety is the ultimate goal, district attorneys should take the lead in implementing proven, cost-effective alternatives to incarceration like DTAP.   In March, 2007, federal DTAP legislation was introduced in Congress.  Both the House and Senate versions of The Second Chance Act (H.R.1593 and S.1060) contain sections covering prosecution drug treatment alternative to prison programs.  Once enacted, this DTAP legislation will authorize new federal funding for state and local prosecutors to establish and oversee drug treatment diversion programs for nonviolent offenders.  This significant bipartisan legislation deserves the vigorous support of all those in the law enforcement community.  Let the revolution begin with us.