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Progress Report |
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Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention
Act of 2000
March 2002
Executive Summary
California’s Proposition 36,
the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000
(SACPA), took effect on July 1, 2001. Since that date,
SACPA has been diverting low-level, non-violent
drug offenders convicted solely of possession for
personal use into community-based treatment instead
of incarceration. While it is too early to determine
the ultimate success of this program, this preliminary
progress report describes how the state and the largest
counties are implementing this initiative.
Early indications suggest that SACPA
is being implemented well in most of the state, and
that the initiative is on the path to fulfill its
promise to the voters to reduce the rates of drug
addiction and crime by diverting offenders to drug
treatment, and will save California taxpayers many
millions of dollars by reducing our state’s jail
and prison populations.
Highlights
SACPA Clients
- In the seven counties examined
in this report—Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Sacramento,
San Bernardino, San Diego, San Mateo, and Ventura—over
9,500 individuals had been referred to treatment
through SACPA by the end of December 2001.
- In these seven counties, the average
number of clients active in treatment was 71 percent
of the total number of referrals.
- According to an initial assessment
of a cross-section of California counties, meth-amphetamine
was used by over 40 percent of SACPA clients. It
is also the primary drug of choice in a number of
California counties examined for this report, including
Contra Costa, Sacramento, and Ventura Counties.
Interagency Collaboration
- SACPA involves a unique and groundbreaking
collaboration between criminal justice and public
health agencies at the county level, including substance
abuse and mental
health departments, probation, parole and the courts:
53 of the state’s 58 counties, and each of
the 12 largest counties (which together comprise
75 percent of the state’s population) chose
local health departments (or the drug and alcohol
divisions thereof) to serve as lead agencies in
the implementation of SACPA.
Hardcopies of the report are available
by contacting Drug Policy Alliance at (916) 444-3751
or [email protected].
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