WAR ON DRUG COSTS ESCALATE

Taxpayers Absorb Most Of Prosecution Expenses

WAUKEGAN -- Lake County will spend $702,969 prosecuting drug offenses
this year.

While that number increases each year, the federal government's annual
grant funding of $204,858 to prosecute is unchanged from 20 years ago.
Except for an estimated $30,000 in revenue from asset forfeitures,
county taxpayers absorb the difference: $468,111 which accounts for
3.7 percent of the state's attorney's office's $12.7 million budget.

The state's attorney's multijurisdictional drug prosecution grant
program funds four assistant state's attorneys, two secretaries, a
paralegal and an investigator -- eight of 126 full-time positions in
State's Attorney Michael Waller's office.

The program's goal is to deter drug-related crime through criminal
investigations and prosecutions and focus on increasing the penalties
of drug-related offenses, a strategy that has filled federal and state
prisons with more non-violent drug offenders. According to Department
of Justice statistics, non-violent drug offenders accounted for nearly
a quarter of federal and state prison populations in 2006.

Although one objective is stiffer penalties for drug offenses, Waller
said the county's drug prosecution program does not contribute to that
trend. He said first-time offenders are not sentenced to prison, since
the focus is on treatment.

"Our approach is that drug dealers should be punished, and drug
addicts should be treated," he said. "It's not appropriate to send
addicts to prison. What's appropriate is treatment."

The State's Attorney's Office performed 529 felony drug prosecutions
from October last year through June. Drug prosecutions account for a
third of the office's total case load, Waller said.

The county's contribution to the drug war effort extents to pre-arrest
investigation and cooperation with local, state and federal law
enforcement and follows through with subsequent prosecutions of
drug-related trafficking and conspiracies.

Enforcing drug laws at the federal, state, county and municipal
levels, prosecuting offenders and imprisoning convicts is a $6 billion
nationwide industry, according to some estimates.