Tepid Attack on Prison Drugs

The California Department of Corrections estimates that 80% of all prison inmates may be substance abusers and that 37% were imprisoned specifically for dealing in or possessing illegal drugs. And as the officials admitted at a state legislative hearing last week, drug abuse often continues right through a prison sentence, making inmates more violent and more likely to commit crimes after their release.

At the hearing, state corrections officials outlined a supposedly “zero tolerance” strategy on drug abuse in prison. Unfortunately, their program is tough in name only and will do little to reduce the flood of drugs in prisons.

The heart of the CDC’s plan is the collection of 150 urine samples weekly at four prisons in a 15-month pilot program. That’s a ridiculously unambitious approach in a system with 33 prisons and 162,000 inmates. For years prison officials in states like Massachusetts, Florida and Oregon have conducted random drug screening of all of their inmates and documented the programs’ success. The Pennsylvania State Department of Corrections performed 120,000 random urinalysis tests on its 35,000 inmates between 1996 and 1998 and reduced its proportion of prisoners testing positive for drugs from 7.8% to 1.4%.

States like Pennsylvania require their prison guards, cooks and other staffers to submit to random drug screening. California’s plan would not. Public defenders and relatives of inmates say that guards routinely walk in and out of prisons without anyone examining their lunch boxes and briefcases, while visitors and their possessions are subjected to exhaustive searches.

Don Novey, president of the state’s politically powerful prison guards union, says that “out of 28,000 [sworn correctional officers], you’re going to have five or 10 who are ignorant enough” to smuggle drugs. Novey says the solution is not to test or search guards but rather to do “better background investigations and psychological screening [of potential officers].”

Evidence from other states suggests, however, that prison guards decide to traffic in drugs only after becoming officers and seeing the profits to be made. And while Novey implies that smuggling is confined to “five or 10” officers, CDC officials told legislators they had in the last two years received 109 unsolicited allegations of drug use or smuggling by prison staffers, 41 of which the Corrections Department says it has confirmed so far. According to the department’s assistant director of internal affairs, 71 cases involved sworn peace officers.

CDC officials say they want to study “which factors must be included in a good drug reduction strategy.” They plan to publish their findings in 2001 and then consider whether to expand their effort. When pressed by legislators last week, however, corrections official John Erickson acknowledged that “the more drug testing you use, the lower your use is going to be in prison.”

The agency should bow to common sense and agree to start testing in all prisons and testing and inspecting guards. If it doesn’t, the chairman of last week’s legislative hearing, Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), should make good on his promise to introduce legislation that would accomplish what the corrections agency declines to do.