With California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and the state legislature desperate to eliminate a $26 billion budget deficit, the state's voter-approved Proposition 36, which mandates that low-level drug offenders be ordered to treatment instead of jail, is not immune from the budget axe. Under the budget agreement just hammered out, Prop. 36 funding will take a massive 83% cut in funding, from $108 million last year to just $18 million next year.
That means thousands of California drug offenders will get neither jail nor treatment. State law forbids jailing them, and there will be nowhere near enough money to treat them.
"The courts are still obligated to push the people into treatment, knowing that the funds, the programs, the services aren't there," said Haven Fearn, director of the Contra Costa County Health Services Department's Alcohol and Other Drug Services Division. "That's the craziness that everyone is having to deal with. What's the answer to that?" she told the Oakland Tribune.
"It's sort of silly, it's awfully close to having just eliminated the program. You get down to such a core level that it's of very little use to most people," said Gary Spicer, management services director at the Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services Agency. "What you wind up with is a treatment delivery system that's monopolized by judicial referrals and no longer available at the community level," he said. "It's a harm that keeps on hurting," he told the Tribune.
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said the slashed funding will result in "very long waiting lists" and drug offenders walking free while waiting for treatment.
Under Proposition 36, which was approved by 61% of voters in 2000, first- and second-time drug offenders must be sent to treatment, not jail. A UCLA study found that every dollar spent on Prop. 36 drug treatment would save the state between $2.50 and $4. The study estimated the program needs about $230 million a year to meet the judicially-referred treatment demand.
Prop. 36 mandated $120 million a year in state funding through the 2005-06 fiscal year, but since then the program has had to compete for funding with other state priorities. The legislature increased funding to $145 million in 2006-07, then cut it to $120 million in 2007-08, and cut it again to $108 million last year.
