Alexander Bassin, who died Wednesday at age 92, co-founded Daytop Lodge in the early 1960s as an alternative to prison for drug addicts.

Daytop at the time exemplified a revolutionary idea: Drug addicts should be treated rather than incarcerated. It is now one of the nation’s largest drug treatment centers, with 26 sites in four states. It claims its therapeutic model is used in 66 other nations.

At the time, Bassin was the director of research and education at the New York State Supreme Court, 2nd Judicial District (Brooklyn-Staten Island). A newly minted Ph.D., he had previously worked supervising released addicts. In a 1965 article for Federal Probation Report, he wrote: “Daytop Lodge was born against the depressing backdrop of failure and frustration known to every probation and parole officer who has attempted to work with addicts.”

In cooperation with other court officers, a criminologist, and a psychiatrist, Bassin applied for a grant to set up a pilot program, a “halfway house [in] a comfortable residential building of the ‘white elephant’ type located in a suburban area … far removed from ‘Junkville.'” In the event, a 20-room Staten Island mansion overlooking the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was selected. “A Brooklyn dope addict catching his first glimpse of Daytop Lodge might well emit a low whistle of astonishment through his teeth and mutter, ‘Man, what a joint,'” Bassin wrote.

The small client community with intensive group therapy is well-established today, but at the time it had only been tried in a few isolated instances. One of the model’s pioneers told Bassin it was based on anthropological research: “We attempt to create an extended family of the type found in preliterate tribes with a strong, perhaps autocratic, father-figure who dispenses firm justice combined with warm concern.” It helped that the model emerged at a time when effective methods of drug testing were being developed, thus forcing clients to prove they remained drug-free.

After facing significant community opposition and a greatly expanding client base as the 1960s wore on, Daytop moved its primary location to the Catskills. Bassin, meanwhile, took early retirement and moved to Tallahassee, Fla., where he became a professor in the criminology department at Florida State University.

Bassin was a Brooklyn native, but when he was young his Russian-born parents moved the family to Utah, where they were among a few dozen families that formed the Jewish “back to the soil” farming village of Clarion, Utah. After a number of unproductive seasons, the community fell apart due to drought, but Bassin’s family remained for a few more years, making a living trading with Indians. The family returned to Brooklyn, where Bassin’s father became a bricklayer.

Bassin attended Brooklyn College and became a social worker, then joined the state Supreme Court in Brooklyn as a parole officer.

After he moved to Florida, Bassin co-founded DISC Village, a narcotics treatment center in Tallahassee along the same lines as Daytop Village.

Bassin retired in 1992 and spent the next few years traveling extensively, staying at elder hostels around America and in Mexico.

Alexander Bassin

Born August 4, 1912, in Brooklyn; died November 3 at Tallahassee of heart failure; survived by his wife of 66 years, Ann Bassin; two sons, Barry Bassin Kade and Roy Bassin, and two brothers, Jonas and Samuel.