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.