Pubdate: Fri, 20 May 2005 Source: Charleston Gazette (WV) Copyright: 2005 Charleston Gazette Contact: http://www.wvgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/77 Note: Source rarely prints LTEs received from outside its circulation area Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone) JAIL ALTERNATIVE # Smart Sentences Get Boost PUTTING nonviolent offenders into smarter, low-cost, rehabilitative probation - instead of locking them in crime-breeding steel cells at enormous taxpayer expense - makes good sense. Many West Virginia counties are pursuing this goal by creating "day reporting centers" where lesser defendants must check in regularly while holding jobs and supporting their families. They will receive guidance designed to prevent them from slipping back into crime. The trend began because rising jail costs are demolishing county budgets. Some of the increase stemmed from an increase in the daily price of locking people in cages. The newer regional jails are more expensive to run than the former county jails. But judges also are sentencing more people to jail. The day centers got some help this week in the form of $50,000 each for eight counties - a total of $400,000. Kanawha, Logan, Mason, McDowell, Monongalia, Ohio, Putnam and Wyoming will receive grants from state lawsuit settlement funds. In the past decade, state lawsuits have netted nearly $300 million. After outside lawyers take large shares, the rest is administered by Attorney General Darrell McGraw, partly for controversial ads bearing his name. Last year, a bill by House Speaker Bob Kiss and others sought to put settlement funds into the state treasury, for appropriation by the Legislature. It passed the House, but died in the Senate. The day center money is from a $10 million settlement by Purdue Pharma Inc. The drug company paid to end a suit over how the company sold the painkiller OxyContin, a highly addictive drug that is often abused. Outside lawyers got $3.3 million. Chief Deputy Attorney General Fran Hughes announced that $400,000 of the rest would go to day centers. "We chose the day reporting centers because many people are there because of drug offenses," she said. "With this money, we hope they can get the treatment they need to overcome their addiction." Aside from the debate over who should handle state lawsuit settlement funds, it's great that support is flowing into the new centers that will enable nonviolent offenders to remain productive citizens. - --- MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman