I found your editorial "Attacking the Drug/Crime Link" (LA Times, 1/7/99) insightful and profound. The editorial summarized several of the most important research conclusions that relate to the American crime problem. I would add the following research facts: (1) Around 80% of all criminals in prison have a substance abuse problem; (2) Only around 5% of the 1.7 million people in custody in the United States today receive any kind of treatment for their drug problem; and (3) As indicated in the Times editorial, the Amity "therapeutic community" Project at the California Department of Corrections Donavan Prison, has demonstrated a remarkable 16% arrest rate for convicts who go through the Program, as compared to a 65% arrest rate for those who receive no drug addiction treatment. The 65% recidivist-arrest rate is the predictable expectation for parolees released from all prisons in the United States.
Since 1991, when the Amity Program was instituted by the CDC at the Donavan Prison, I have worked directly in the project directing psychodrama and group therapy with the inmates who have availed themselves of the program. In this project, and my 50 years of work in the field, I have observed a remarkable spirit among most criminal/addicts to change their lives in a positive direction, when they are offered some reasonable treatment option. It is estimated that the national prison population will reach 3 million in the next decade. If this type of positive treatment program was instituted on a national level, we could cut our prison population in half by the year 2010, and prevent tens of thousands of criminals and their victims from the human tragedies that flow from crime.
Lewis Yablonsky, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Criminology- CSUN. Author: THE THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY: A SUCCESSFUL APPROACH FOR TREATING SUBSTANCE ABUSERS.