Captain Michael Teichner was thrilled with hispromotion at Donovan State Prison except for onething. His new duties included supervising thefacility’s privately run drug treatment program. Teichner--known as “Iceman” around the prisonyard--didn’t much believe in rehabilitating criminals.During his twenty year career with the CaliforniaDepartment of Corrections, he had seen plenty ofreform-minded do-gooders come and go. When hemet over lunch with Elaine Abraham of the non-profit Amity Foundation of California, which runs therehab center, he lived up to his moniker. “Quite frankly,” the Iceman said of prison drugtreatment programs, “I don’t think they work.”Four years later, Teichner is a changed man--likemany of the convicts who undergo Amity’s yearlongregimen and now lead productive lives. Today, hesays the only problem with drug and alcohol treat-ment is that the exploding prison population can’t getenough of it. Compared tothe checkered performanceof past substance abuseprograms for convicts, Amityand similiar projects aroundthe country may offer correc-tions officals a powerfulweapon to reduce crime,addiction and soaring prisoncosts. The latest researchshows that by weaningconvicts off illegal drugs--which are widely available inprison--and overhauling theirlifestyles, such programs cansignificantly lower

Los Angeles TimesFriday April 25, 1997

In prison, a Drug Rehab That Pays OffEven Skeptics are impressed with treatment that uses brutallyhonest encounter groups and ex-offenders as counselors.Tax Payers save in the long run. By DAN WEIKEL

TIMES STAFF WRITER

re-incarceration rates, saving taxpayers millions ofdollars a year. Consequently, prison officals grap-pling with unprecedented overcrowding due to thenations’s war on drugs have started to rethink howthey deal with addicted prisoners. The task beforethem is daunting. Nationally, only one in six of an estimated800,000 inmates involved with illegal drugs recievesany treatment, most of it sporadic education classesor weekly counseling sessions that don’t do muchgood. Little in the way of treatment has been providedbecause many law enforcement officals and legisla-tors believe that tough sentences are the best way todeal with the nation’s drug problem. Academicresearch in the mid-1970s also fostered the long-

AN INMATE LEAVING PRISON GIVES A FRIEND STAYING BEHIND AN

EMBRACE AT AMITY’S DRUG TREATMENT PROGRAM

held, some say mistaken, belief that nothing workswhen it comes to reforming criminals. In California an estimated 100,000 state prisoninmates have histories of chronic drug and alcoholuse. But there are only 400 slots in the correctionssystem that offer treatment considered intensiveenough to break the dangerous cycle of crime andaddiction. At Donovan, a medium security prison in an aridvalley east of San Diego, hundreds of convictsapply for no more than 20 slots that becomeavailable every month. For those who get ac-cepted, the treatment can rewire their lives. The Amity program,which opened at Donovanin 1990, contracts with the Corrections Depart-ment for 1.5million a year.It is a so-called thera-peutic com-munity, a styleof intensivetreatmentthought to bemost effectivefor felons withsubstantialcriminalrecords. For 9 to12 months,200 partici-pants share ahousing unit,dining facilities and recreational areas on the mainyard. Upon release from prison graduating parol-ees can volunteer to continue taxpayer-fundedcounseling at Amity’s residential off-site programnestled in a wooded hillside in north San DiegoCounty. At both facilities, convicts are required to attenda steady stream of seminars and encounter groupsrun by recovering addicts, ex-convicts and someof the most experienced substance abuse counse-lors in the field. The routine is rigorous. No one gets time offtheir sentences for participating or reprieves from

prison work. Unlike with rehabilitation efforts atother penitentiaries, Amity enrollees are not isolatedfrom Donovan’s main yard, where there aretemptations to use smuggled drugs everyday. The goal is to teach convicts to deal withpersonal problems and to live life without drugs andcrime. But the job is difficult because inmates areamong the hardest substance abusers to treat.Their complicated pathologies often include pov-erty, gang membership, mental illness and childabuse. Relapse is common, and change happens ata glacial pace over many months. Much of the transformation, if it occurs, takesplace in encounter groups that attempt to dissect--

with brutalhonesty--what causedthe convict’ssubstanceabuse andcriminalbehavior. Thesessions arefilled withdiscussionsabout trust,personalaccountabil-ity, relation-ships withwomen,familyproblems,

substance abuse and the inner rage that leads toviolence. By drawing inmates out, counselors say,they can help them understand their problems andfind solutions.

“The is nothing easy about facing the truth aboutyourself,”former cocaine addict and crack dealerTerry Ward says of Amity’s group discussions.

Nothing Easy About Facing the Truth

“The badder you act the more they dig. It’s hard tokeep up the facade. They just pick pieces out ofyour story and make you humble. The first fewmonths will tear you apart.” Ward, 40, was a violent hustler and convictedarmed robber, known to denizens of South-CentralLos Angeles as “Voltron.” He always carried twopistols, a knife and a cane that he used as aweapon. Skilled with a razor blade, Ward could sculpt a$5 piece of crack so it looked like it was worth$15. On the street he would not hesitate to beat upsomeone at the smallest provacation. He oncebroke a man’s jaw for calling him by his given name. Ward was paroled in 1991 after serving twoyears at Donovan. He stayed so long in Amity’soff-site volunteer program that he had to be toldto leave. Today, he manages a Wendy’s restau-rant and lives in Spring Valley, a rural community

east of San Diego. He has finally gotten to know his19-year-old daughter, whom he abandoned morethan 10 years ago. “Volron was a bad person. He died in prison,”Ward said. “There are people who go throughAmity and use again. I choose not to. I’ve beeninsane long enough.” On one recent morning, 15 convicts, some justlike Ward, gather for group therapy in the RobinGabriel Room of Amity’s prison compound.Gabriel graduated from an Amity jail program inArizona, where the organization got its start in the1980s. She devoted her life to the foundation untilshe died of cancer in 1990. Half the people here are doing time for violentoffenses, including murder. All have histories ofdrug and alcohol abuse. Though prison is a placewhere revealing inner feelings can be interpreted asa sign of weakness, most are not afraid to talk. “All my relationships have been built on lies,”

AN INMATE WHO HAS JUST COMPLETED A YEAR IN THE AMITY PROGRAM AT R.J. DONOVAN IS WELCOMED BY

FELLOW PAROLEES AT THE AMITY RESIDENTIAL FACILITY AT VISTA

says one barrel-chested convict with corn-rowedhair. “I fall in love with a woman and then she iswith my best friend. Women just play a man’s heartand throw’em to the curb.” “I’ve never been around a decent woman,”another inmate volunteers. “I’ve been in crackhouses a lot of my life, and you don’t trust anyone,man or woman.” “On the streets, I was a predator. I preyed onwomen,” says counselor Ernie Logan, an ex-convictand recovering addict whose father was an alco-holic. “I had a lot of trust issues too. My motherand father betrayed me as a child.” Logan’s reference to childhood strikes a chordwith a goateed inmate sitting across from him. He isdoing eight years for robbery. Rejection hasweighed heavily on his mind for years. “I’m very conscious of the pain I feel,” he says.“If Ernie won’t say hello to me, I feel like, ‘----Ernie.’ Something that small makes me think backon when I was a kid, all the shame and grief ofbeing abandoned by my parents. That emotion hasenergy. The power is hard to control.” “But,” counselor Logan responds, “if you are intouch with what happened to you and the pain it hascaused you, you shouldn’t be doing the same thingsto someone else. You shouldn’t be taking it out onsomebody else.”

Treatment Is ‘Cheap and It Works’ If drug treatment advocates had their way,programs like Amity’s would be available to everyconvict seeking help. Incarceration alone, they say,does not necessarily stop addiction or protect thepublic in the long run. State figures show that the average drug offenderin California, whether convicted of sales, distributionor possession, is returned to the street in 18 to 24months. Proponents say effective drug treatment pro-grams can be provided at a fraction of the billions ofdollars being spent on one of the longest buildingbooms in the history of the state penal system. If present trends continue, the Caifornia prisonpopulaton will rise from 141,000 to more than200,000 by 2000. Slightly more than 50,000

inmates will be doing time for drug-related offenses. Assuming today’s prices--which do not includethe expense of building more prisons--drug relatedfelons could cost taxpayers $500 million to $1billion a year to incarcerate by the end of thecentury. “We’ve taken the tough-on-crime approach todrugs. Now we have to figure out what to do withthe increasing numbers of people in prison. Treat-ment is a good way to go. It’s cheap and it works,”said Harry K. Wexler, a researcher for the NationalDevelopment and Research Institute, a New York-based think tank that specializes in criminal justiceissues. For almost two decades, Wexler has studiedprison substance abuse programs nationwide. Hisfindings show that the re-incarceration rate forAmity, including dropouts, is about 20% lower thanfor untreated convicts two years after release fromprison. It is estimated that about 65% of untreatedconvicts are rearrested within the same time period. The most dramatic reductions occurred amongprogram graduates who received several months oftreatment at Amity’s outside facility. Of that group,16% were rearrested. The California Department of Correctionsestimates that if Amity treats 2,100 inmates overseven years at a cost of $1.5 million a year, taxpay-ers would recoup the program’s expenses and save$4.7 million in prison costs due to reduced recidi-vism. Assuming that Amity-style programs wereestabished in all 32 state prisons, taxpayers’ poten-tial savings could be as high as $150 million overseven years if the current level of success weremaintained. And that does not reveal the total savings.Convicts who go straight no longer tax the police,court and social welfare system. The analysis alsodoes not include other benefits to the correctionssystem, such as less violence and fewer violations ofprison rules. Amity “is doing better than I ever anticipated,”said Donovan Warden John Ratelle. “If we hadonly a 10% reduction in recidivism, that would be asuccess. It is worth the money to do what we aredoing.”

He grew even more convinced that the programwas making progress when he ordered surpriseurine tests at the treatment unit in 1991. Therandom testing was conducted on a Mondaybecause prison drug use is often heaviest on week-ends. Authorities expected that 25% of inmatestested would test positive, but only one did--formarijuana.

Even the Unwilling Get Drawn Intothe Process In many ways, prisons are perfect settings fordrug treatment. There is a large captive audience.Inmates are often motivated by many factors fromsheer boredom to measures that have increasedsentences for repeat offenders, such as California’sthree-strikes law. Even the unwilling get drawn into the processdespite themselves, such as Rocky R. Reeder, aheroin addict and habitual crimminal who applied toAmity just to stop his transfer to a prison in North-ern California. Reeder, 41, of San Diego, had been a one-mancrime wave. By his own estimate, he stole morethan 70 vehicles, and each week burglarized two orthree houses for much of his career. If someonewas sleeping on the sofa or taking a shower whenhe entered, the bigger the thrill. He went to juvenile hall and the California YouthAuthority more than a dozen times. He has beensent to prison seven times, the last to Donovan in1992 for possession of stolen property. “At first, I didn’t care about treatment,” he said.“But I started listening to the leaders in grouptherapy. They were just like me. It made a differ-ence. The person had been there, and I couldrelate.” Reeder, who has been off drugs since May1992, works with his son as a technician for a waterpurification business. He realizes he can neverapologize to his victims, so he occasionally visitsAmity’s parolee program and counsels those intreatment. “Many convicts are amenable to changing theirbehavior,” said Lewis Yablonsky, an expert onresidential treatment programs and professoremeritus of sociology and criminology at Cal StateNorthridge. “Amity is a small program even in

Donovan, but it is a significant demonstration ofwhat can be done.” He predicts that well-run treatment projects inevery state prison could significantly reduce theinmate population. Substance abuse treatment has been added totwo other prisons since Amity arrived at Donovan.The Correctional Institute for Women in Fronteraopened the Forever Free program for 120 inmatesseveral years ago. An 80-bed facility called WaldenHouse has begun at the California RehabilitationCenter in Norco. This fall, the first 1,056 beds of a 1,456-bedfacility will open at Corcoran. The Corcoranprogram will more than triple the statewide capacityof treatment for convicts--a crucial test to see ifdrug rehabilitation can work on a large scale. “I don’t think we have seen a serious effort atprison treatment until the last few years,” said JohnErickson, director of substance abuse programs forthe Department of Corrections. “There is now anall-out effort to refine treatment strategies.” He said adding large numbers of treatment bedsto the prison system has gone slowly becausereliable research has not been available in Californiauntil the last few years. Whether drug treatment will be expanded on amassive scale is hard to predict, even with morepositive research. Legislators, government officialsand correctional officers worry that a broad expan-sion might compromise the quality of smaller,successful programs like Amity. “People need to be convinced that this is morethan an aberration,” said Rod Mullen, president ofthe Amity Foundation. “They need to see this assomething as normal as a prison industry program,or a religious program or a high school educationprogram. But that kind of shift in attitude does nothappen overnight.” Indeed, it hasn’t. The first drug and alcoholprograms for convicts were established in the 1930sat two federal prisons in Lexington, Ky., and FortWorth, Texas. Because such efforts were poorlyadministered and ineffective, criminal justice expertscame to believe that little could be done to rehabili-tate convicts. That attitude did not begin to change until the

early 1980s, when a substance abuse treatmentprogram called Stay ‘N’ Out reported some sub-stantial success at the Arthur Kill State Prison onStaten Island, N.Y. As more positive results emerged from a pro-gram in Oregon, the federal government beganto fund pilot projects across the country. Sincethen, encouraging findings have been reported inCalifornia, Deleware and Texas. Still, many public officials approach the issuewith caution. Craig L. Brown, California financedirector, said many legislators and bureaucratswould be more encouraged about prison drugtreatment if the improvements could be demon-strated at five years after release, instead of twoyears now used for research purposes. “There are some people who think drug treat-ment has marginal impact and is not long-lastingenough,” Brown said. “On the other hand theexisting projects have been well-researched withgood scientific methods. Everything looks verypromising, but you can’t say its a slam-dunkwinner right now.” Among those who are now believers is stateSenate Democratic Leader Bill Lockyer of Hay-ward. He introduced legislation in March thatwould add 4,000 treatment slots to the correc-tions system by 2002. The proposal has somebipartisan support. The state legislative analyst’s office estimates thatthe expansion might save taxpayers $36 million ayear in addition to a one-time savings of $85 millionby avoiding the construction of facilities for 2,000inmates. “The current policy of building more prisonswastes money and doesn’t rehabilitate those insituations where it might work,” Lockyer said.“I don’t consider myself a do-gooder or a lib-eral on the issue. If this can help a convict,improve public safety and save money, thatsounds like a winner to me.”

Copyright: Los Angeles Times