The defeat of Proposition 5, in California, was a major blow to the entire area of Drug Addiction Rehabilitation. Either they know it or not it was also a disastrous outcome for the habitancy of California. It was nothing more than a rude awakening to the destructive power of a Union gone astray from the society it serves. The California Correctional Peace Officers connection (Union) in California is the largest, wealthiest, most fine lobby group in the State. Corrections is a cottage business in the California economy. The Ccpoa includes prison Corrections Officers and Parole Agents, and it numbers 30,000 or more members. These are well paid, extremely compensated in benefits, and like minded people. They lobby against the pro drug medicine field, constantly.
California has implemented Substance Abuse Programs or Sap's into verily every prison in the State. Some sources say there are 33 prisons, some say 36, but regardless the estimate changes ordinarily because they build prisons, not colleges in California. There are in fact, more State Prisons than State Colleges, and these are not small endeavors. Several California prisons have more than 6,000 inmates. For example, San Quentin is one with over 6,000 inmates and it employs over 900 correctional officers and over 600 other staff. This is verily big business. And by establishing these so-called "treatment programs" in every prison, they are now integral in the estimate of employees needed. This at the same time makes the Ccpoa bigger and stronger. They have exceptional legal counsel and feed lots of dollars into Hmo's, local economies, and lobbying in Sacramento, the State Capitol. This is Power! The frightening question is their power to keep the Sap's in business. Well, you might ask, why is that a problem? It's simple! The Sap programs don't work.
A description released Feb. 21, 2007, by the State of California, Office of the Inspector General, states emphatically, in bold print in the header, "The state's substance abuse medicine programs for inmates do not reduce recidivism, yet cost the state 3 million per year." In other words, as I previously stated, they don't work. The following is a quote from that same study:
"Effective medicine for substance abuse offers one of the state's best hopes of reducing the estimate of inmates who repeatedly cycle in and out of prisons," said Inspector general Matthew Cate. "Successful medicine programs could reduce the cost to society of criminal operation related to drug abuse, change lives, and help ease the state's prison overcrowding crisis. But so far the agency of Corrections and recovery has squandered that opportunity," Cate said.
The description goes even additional in announcing that "One five-year University of California, Los Angeles, study of the state's two largest in-prison programs found, in fact, that the 12-month recidivism rates for inmates who received in-prison medicine was slightly higher than that of a control group."
Another modern study by the University of California estimated that 42 percent of California inmates have a "high need" for alcohol medicine and 56 percent have a high need for drug treatment, and recidivism rates for California inmates in general continue to be among the top in the country.
Yet an additional one modern study showed that inmates who received in-prison medicine followed by at least "90 days of community-based aftercare" did have significantly lower recidivism rates than non-participants. This begs us to query why are we not sending these addicts and alcoholics straight to the society Based Providers? This is what Proposition 5 of 2008 was designed to do. The facts I have just given did not make it into the communal arena, in keep of Prop 5. The supporters did not have the funds or I'm guessing the resources to get detailed info to the Voters! (You can find this document by doing an online search for the Office of the Inspector General, California, Government and looking for the Study released Feb. 21, 2007.)
But, the Ccpoa accompanied by Madd (who I had supported prior to this year) did have the money to bombard the habitancy with a systematic division of disinformation. They convincingly made it sound like this proposition was going to "en mass" just issue the Meth and Crack onto the streets and into the communities of California. Proposition 5 was in fact a proper, economically wise, safe explication to looking a way to fund the more effective society based "Treatment Providers" in the Substance Abuse medicine field. As with the "deemed success", Prop 36, violent offenders would have been excluded from participation, as well as habitancy with felony "Sales" convictions. But the propaganda machine of the corrections union, Ccpoa, made it sound like the prison gates were being opened, and whoever chose to would leave. The wording of their Tv spots was verily ridiculous, but founded in the "fear" works doctrine so well implemented by the Bush management for over 7 years. Guess what, it worked. The habitancy fell for it. I must say that having Madd on board probably legitimized the whole campaign of terror. Too bad!
On the mean it costs over ,000 to keep an inmate incarcerated for a year. Forty Thousand Dollars!!! They can participate in a society based medicine agenda for fees fluctuating from k to k for a year. What you verily have to understand here is that it only take 90 days in these programs to reduce the rate of return to prison. If you put the inmates into medicine for a full year, these numbers are going to incrementally improve. It is verily thorough among drug medicine professionals that a full year in treatment, over briefer lengths of time, can improver their own effectiveness between 50 and 90 percent.
The "science of addiction" and its implementation into medicine programs over the past ten years has been a revolution in knowledge of the "disease concept" of addiction and alcoholism. This disease is recognized as a disease by the American curative connection , the American Psychiatric connection and the World condition Organization, and has been for decades. The drug counseling certification agencies have moved into State Universities and are turning out extremely capable professionals in the field of drug abuse counseling. But they are enduringly challenged by the curative and psychiatry fields because they are effective and paid much less than a physician or psychiatrist. It's money again. As with the prison employees, the purse strings are pulled so the defense mode kicks in. Caadac, the California connection of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors has very high standards for certification that can only be obtained by a aggregate of courses in State University Drug and Alcohol Certification, extension Programs, and by passing both written and oral examinations straight through a testing board. These kind of agencies exist over the entire country. Many private, or society based medicine programs in California wish Caadac certification over a 4 year degree, and others wish a aggregate Caadac credentialing and job experience in place of the degree. But the most effective treatment, that of society based providers, who the fabulous majority of these counselors work for has no needful government funding in place. Nearly all of it goes to the failed prison Sap's.
The opponents of Proposition 5, in California, would have a big pat on the back advent for their extremely effective campaigning, if wasn't for the fact that all that they verily did was just out spend the dedicated, under paid professionals in the drug medicine field! This is a true shame for the misinformed and the old "crime and punishment" advocates of California... The taxpayers. California Corrections has squandered over a Billion Dollars, since 1989, on prison programs that don't work, and the communal remains in the dark about the truth. But the real losers here, are the countless Addicts and Alcoholics, and their families, who are imprisoned rather than treated for a Disease that can effectively be arrested, allowing them to come to be "productive, taxpaying members of Society.
The ensue of not rehabilitating human beings afflicted with this dread disease is so far reaching that it is truly heartbreaking. Families remain broken and dysfunctional when it need not be so. The question then extends into welfare costs and overcrowded publicly financed reasoning clinics, too. Financially failing county hospitals have their urgency wards overflowing with children and spouses from these families who inevitably wind up being medically indigent, using the urgency room as their clinic. As it is they remain a "burden on society" rather than an asset, because incarceration does not change the Addict. They re-offend and go back to prison where the occupation criminals teach them how to come to be more of a criminal than they ever would have been if not subjected to the prison environment and population. "Genetically prone to Addiction" children examine all of the behaviors and ensue right in the footsteps of their addicted parent because the aggregate of genetics and environment practically verily doom them to do so.
Proposition 5 could have been the starting of a turn-around for California, and may have helped the rest of the country ensue suit, eventually. But, an society desiring overtime and government perks for it's members, that is also the largest, most powerful, union in the State, lobbied, bought and sold out the citizens of California, in the dark spirit of greed fabulous true justice and hope, by running a campaign of propaganda that misinformed and misled the habitancy into a very serious mistake. On top of all the human suffering and loss, we'll waste over 0,000,000 every year until we stop doing the same thing over and over expecting a separate result!
The Defeat of Prop 5 - California
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