Drug-addicted, non-violent felony offenders with five prior drug arrests and an average of four years behind bars achieved significantly lower recidivism rates and higher employment rates through a drug treatment program than comparable offenders who were sent to prison, according to findings published in a White Paper - Crossing the Bridge: An Evaluation of the Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison (DTAP) Program - released by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

These rates were achieved at about half the cost of incarceration, the CASA evaluation found. "This DTAP (Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison) program demonstrates that we don’t have to throw away the key for repeat drug addicted offenders, even those who sell drugs to support their habit. Prosecutors can help repeat felony offenders become responsible citizens if they combine treatment and vocational training with the certainty of punishment for noncompliance," says Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "In this time of burgeoning prison populations and shrinking federal and state budgets, every prosecutor in the nation can follow the lead of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and try this program. DTAP offers prosecutors the same kind of effective alternative to incarceration that drug courts offer judges."

The DTAP program provides 15 to 24 months of residential drug treatment, vocational training, and social and mental health services to drug-addicted, nonviolent repeat offenders who face mandatory punishment under New York State’s second felony offender law. Participants are abusers of heroin, crack and powder cocaine among other substances. They plead guilty to a felony, thereby ensuring a mandatory prison sentence if they abscond from the program. Sentencing is deferred upon program participation; if participants complete the program, their guilty plea is withdrawn and the charges dismissed.

The five-year CASA evaluation found that participants who completed the program and graduated were 33 percent less likely to be rearrested, 45 percent less likely to be reconvicted, and 87 percent less likely to return to prison, than the comparable prison group. DTAP graduates were three and one-half times more likely to be employed after graduation than before their arrest. Before their arrest, 26 percent were working either part-time or full-time. Following successful completion of the program, 92 percent had found employment.

"This program in which failure is a one-way ticket to prison shows the effectiveness of coerced treatment," says Califano. The CASA evaluation was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The effectiveness of coerced treatment remains a controversial issue and CASA and its funder NIDA have a reputation among social science researchers for producing methodologically suspect work. After years of refusing to subject research through the peer review process, CASA finally had a peer reviewed article published in the February 2003 edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Peer review notwithstanding, the JAMA study was subjected to intense criticism. Sociology Professor David Hanson of the State University of New York responded to an equally critical editorial in the Washington Times with a letter stating that "CASA's distortion and fear mongering are useful in increasing the visibility of the organization and bringing in money and lots of it… Joseph Califano, head of CASA, is not a scientist but a lawyer. That may explain, but it certainly can't excuse, the credibility-destroying inadequacies of CASA's report." CASA was created in 1992 at the request of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.