Study: Rehabilitation Beats Jail For Drug Dealers

A new study found that a rehabilitation program works better than jail for nonviolent drug dealers -- and it costs about half as much.

The study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, reported that the program is far more productive than jail time at reducing drug activity.

It includes treatment, counseling and job training in a strict environment designed to instill self-discipline in its students.

Researchers said program participants were 67 percent less likely to return to prison than those who had not been through the 15- to 24-month program.

The five-year study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The rehabilitation program, known as Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison, was developed in 1990 by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes and offered to addicts who repeatedly sold drugs but committed no violent crimes.

Anyone convicted of a violent crime is not eligible.

"Prosecutors can help repeat felony offenders become responsible citizens if they combine treatment and vocational training with the certainty of punishment for noncompliance," said Joseph Califano Jr., CASA president and former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare.

Califano said that, in this time of burgeoning prison populations and shrinking federal and state budgets, every prosecutor in the nation should try the program.

"(It) offers prosecutors the same kind of effective alternative to incarceration that drug courts offer judges," he said.