Find Some Way To Fund This One

Nothing makes the case for Spokane County’s drug court more forcefully than a few facts:

Eighty percent of the inmates processed into the Washington state prison system have a drug dependency.

The average drug-dependent offender commits some 200 felonies a year to support his addiction.

It costs taxpayers $25,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison.

That’s 10 times what it costs to put an offender through the treatment-focused drug court program.

Normally, about 50 percent of drug offenders who serve their sentences reoffend. Among the 43 people who have completed the drug court program in Spokane County, though, the recidivism rate is less than 12 percent - and even among those who entered the program but didn’t complete it successfully, recidivism was below normal.

No wonder drug courts in Spokane County and a few other jurisdictions in Washington have attracted enthusiastic support among judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. They save money, reduce crime and salvage otherwise wasted lives.

In drug court, substance-abusing criminals who qualify plead guilty and give up their right to a trial. Instead of going to jail they enter a rigorous program of treatment, education and tight supervision to shed the influence of drugs.

They can’t be violent or sex offenders. They have to make restitution to their victims. And if they can’t cut it, they go behind bars.

It’s easy to see why the Legislature voted 96-0 in the House and 43-3 in the Senate to allow the Department of Corrections to spend up to $3 million on drug courts in the coming biennium.

The problem is, lawmakers didn’t give the department the money, just the authority to divert it from other essential programs. Lawmakers have a chance to correct that shortcoming when a special session convenes next week. Otherwise, an essential program will die within a year when the federal funding that launched the drug court expires. It was known from the beginning that the federal dollars would last only until 2000, after which they would have to be replaced with state or local funding.

In recent years, Washington state has spent lavishly on new prison capacity, much of which wouldn’t be needed if drug courts had been implemented sooner and more widely. So the Department of Corrections has its hands full dealing with today’s criminals. It has no margin to assume the cost of drug courts, no matter how effective they are at reducing tomorrow’s inmate population.

But the funds should be found. It’s an investment for cost-conscious lawmakers to seize and crime-weary voters to encourage.