It was pretty obvious they want more people in prison. So they couldn’t lead the opposition or it would look very self-serving. Who actually ended up leading the opposition which was at first a surprise, was the drug court judges of California. To me, Prop 36, getting people into treatment, keeping them out of the system, especially for low-level, non-violent offenders without a concurrent charge- it was like skimming of the top- for people who would do well from the community. I thought we would have the drug courts on our side because then they could deal with the individuals who had committed the more serious crimes with more intensive supervision. Unfortunately, they were more like, why didn’t you talk to us? It turned into a turf and money battle during the campaign. Our reason for not going to the drug courts was several-fold, in part the belief that we should have several systems with the drug courts handling more severe offenders. And drug courts cost more money- so they could have only dealt with about one third of the clients of Prop 36. Also- there was no unified system for drug courts throughout the state. For instance, in Los Angeles, you couldn’t get into a drug court if you were an identified gang member. Well, if you live in a certain zip code in Los Angeles, you are an identified gang member. And drug courts aren’t in every county in California.

So Prop 36 took a unified set of criteria and established it for every court in California so people could get drug treatment. We did win. We won by 61% of the vote. That’s more than any president has been put into the presidency out of California. We are now working with the people who had campaigned against us, district attorneys, probation officers, and we now all had to work together. It was very interesting.

The prison industry will always be there, we just hope it will only be there for the people who really need it. It is very hard to come back into society, to get a job, and we know prisons without good programs are just making smarter criminals- like universities for criminality.

What we’ve seen in the preliminary data is that the retention rate in treatment has been between 50 and 60%. Which is phenomenal because the expected treatment retention Is 30-40%. The amazing thing that happened, when the first groups of people came into the Prop 36 program, they were more severely addicted, had many years of simple arrests and very poor health. So the opponents of Prop 36 said- “Hey, you were lying to us, these people are costing more money.” But we had been ignoring this population for 20 years- so of course they were the first to come. We could actually bring them in and give them treatment and work on dual diagnosis, education, lack of available care, give food and shelter. So the first few years, the population we were working with was much more severely addicted. But that population will run out and we will start catching people sooner and be able to offer them services. The basic general health of California has been greatly improved by this. We are also getting primary health services out there. The population using the emergency room for health care, the most expensive way to obtain care, we are helping to dwindle that population down. It has also helped to expand the treatment system and helped to get counties to work together.