Pubdate: Mon, 05 Mar 2001
Source: Lewiston Sun Journal (ME)
Copyright: 2001 Lewiston Sun Journal
Contact:  P.O. Box 4400, Lewiston, Maine 04243-4400
Fax: (207) 777-3436
Website: http://www.sunjournal.com/
Opinion http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm

DRUG COURT SHOULD GET ITS DAY

Quibble all you want about funding Gov. King's laptop proposal or 
specialty license plates, but the expansion of Maine's drug court 
program deserves immediate and full financial backing of the 
Legislature.

Started with federal money back in 1998, the pilot drug court program 
in Cumberland County has been a success. Non-violent drug offenders 
are given a chance to get free of their addictions, hold jobs, 
support families and essentially become productive members of society 
again. A team of law enforcement and judicial professionals, as well 
as social workers, substance abuse counselors and others oversees 
their rehabilitation.

The plan to expand the drug court in April from Cumberland County to 
Lewiston, Rumford and five other locations is funded with the tobacco 
settlement money. There's speculation that the money to sustain the 
program in the second year might fall victim to the state's shortfall 
in revenues.

That would be a mistake, both in human costs and in taxes.

Donald Anspach, an associate sociology professor at the University of 
Southern Maine, published a report on the Cumberland County drug 
court program. He found that more than 90 percent of the program 
participants who graduated had neither relapsed, nor re-offended. And 
even accounting for the 40 percent of the initial participants who 
failed the program, the per-client cost for the drug court was 
$14,781, significantly less than the $20,337 per client if the person 
had gone through the conventional criminal justice track.

On a national level - where some drug courts have been around for 
more than 10 years - the savings are even better. According to the 
National Association of Drug Court Professionals, incarceration of 
drug-using offenders costs between $20,000 and $50,000 per person. By 
contrast, a comprehensive drug court system typically costs less than 
$2,500 for each offender.

The 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics show of the nearly 1.8 million 
people imprisoned, about 80 percent are substance abusers. Itís time 
we as a society dealt with the implications of that.

Drug addicts aren't going to go straight because they fear another 
term in prison. They're going to go straight when they get help for 
their addictions.

The drug court program is a well-designed, well-tested option for 
dealing with non-violent substance abusers. It reduces the crime 
rate, reduces the prison population, saves taxpayers' money and gives 
a drug addict a real shot at turning his life around.

We should give it a real shot in Maine.
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MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer