DRUG COURTS FACE ANOTHER TRIAL

New budget straits again put this effective crime-fighting program at
risk.

These are tight budget times in Virginia, and one place the House of
Delegates is scrimping in the next biennial budget is on drug courts.
Doing so would be a false economy likely to cost state taxpayers more
in the end.

House negotiators should restore the money during budget talks with
senators this week to hash out a compromise 2008-10 state spending
plan.

Sunday, Charlottesville Daily Progress political columnist Bob Gibson
drew public attention to a House Appropriations Committee cut of
almost $6 million from 14 of Virginia's 29 drug courts.

Gibson quoted committee member Watkins Abbitt, who said federal
grants for the program had disappeared, and "It is one of the
luxuries I don't think we can afford." He pointed out that judges can
order drug offenders to get treatment as a requirement of probation.

But Virginia's drug courts do much more.

Nonviolent addicts diverted to the drug court docket can avoid jail
time by agreeing to treatment supervised by a judge, with
increasingly severe sanctions attached for participants who slip up.

They have to be drug free for 12 months before graduating. A Virginia
Tech study several years ago found that more than two-thirds of 261
participants did graduate, and only 7 percent reoffended.

Still, in 2002, the state -- as today, in financial straits -- cut
money for drug courts despite their high success rate, which came at
a fraction of the cost of incarceration. Eventually, the state
directed federal grant money to the program.

The program proved its worth then. Albemarle Sheriff J.E. "Chip"
Harding -- a Charlottesville police narcotics investigator and
supervisor for more than 10 years before becoming a county sheriff
- -- argued its continued worth in a letter to Abbitt: "Obviously,
if an offender can overcome their addiction they are much less
likely to commit not only a drug offense but other offenses that are
typical of an offender trying to support a habit."

The courts are not a luxury, but a cost-effective barrier against crime.