COSTLY NEW JAIL IGNORES REAL PROBLEM, COUNCILWOMAN SAYS

There are city blocks on Greenville's Westside where, in the morning hours,
there is someone lounging on nearly every porch, and almost every person
knows someone who has been to jail. In many of those cases, they say drugs
or alcohol played a role in sending them there.

Kim Sullivan said local inmates are left to "dry out" without any sort of
program to help them quit habits and learn skills. So they sit and eat and
contemplate the next drink.

County Councilwoman Lottie Gibson, a well-known champion of drug treatment,
is blasting the county's new jail expansion plan as a waste of taxpayer
money because she says it plasters over an underlying "crisis" in drug and
alcohol abuse.

Many in black neighborhoods agree with her.

Council Republicans say overcrowding has made jail expansion unavoidable
and that drug and alcohol treatment is being handled by state and private
agencies the way it should be.

Gibson, a 12-year council Democrat and the longest-serving representative,
has fruitlessly proposed construction of a county-funded drug treatment
center for inmates for years. It's an option she views as a more direct
antidote to local crime, since she thinks as much as 80 percent is related
to drugs or alcohol.

Sullivan knows about the county plans to build a bigger jail. She agrees
that convicts should do the time they deserve.

But she said it seems to her that county government cares only that
offenders serve their time, not whether they kick their habits or
contribute to the economy.

Drug treatment and detention center officials say the number of local
crimes where alcohol or drugs are involved is huge - easily a majority -
although Maj. Michelle Melton, the jail administrator, said specific
numbers aren't available.

At issue is a fundamental political difference: Republicans on the council
say alcohol and drug abuse are personal choices that should be addressed by
the private sector, or punished by the public sector when they turn criminal.

At least three of the four Democrats believe such addiction is an illness
that needs medical treatment.

"Why should we build a jail when we need a hospital?" said Gibson,
representative from the heavily black District 25. "They're not even
putting a Band-Aid on the problem by holding these people down there. We
need to treat the core problem of why they're in jail."

Instead, she said the state's biggest and wealthiest county, a
"quote-unquote Christian community," ignores a fundamental problem
affecting the county and its jail by refusing to take on drug and alcohol
treatment for inmates and neighborhood addicts.

Melton said the state Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services
provides some counselors to inmates as its budget allows, although the
program is limited.

Kat Rice, executive director of the Phoenix Center, run by the county's
Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, said those programs affect very few
inmates.

Her agency, which gets 1 percent of its annual budget from the county,
provides treatment at clients' expense, although Gibson and Rice said the
efforts don't begin to suffice for community-wide change and the hundreds
of inmates who need help.

The aim of a larger project, Gibson said, would be restoration so inmates
"can become taxpayers instead of tax receivers."

Rice said the county wouldn't have to pay for a new building to provide
such a systemwide program, but could pay for counselors to do intensive
drug treatment inside the detention center.

Scott Case, council vice chairman, said Gibson wants to take on a problem
that's not the county's responsibility.

"Regulation and jurisdiction of alcohol- and drug-abuse crime and laws
falls under the jurisdiction of the state," Case said. "Our job ... is to
utilize taxpayer resources as efficiently as we can in carrying out
sentencing and punishment of those who commit crimes."

To inject a "philosophical" debate over substance abuse treatment into the
county's process of expanding the jail amounts to bad timing, he said.

Streamlined jail plan

The revamped jail plan presented by Brausch and County Administrator Joe
Kernell to the County Council recently will begin with the expansion of the
adult detention center.

It will make use of alternative sentencing methods and efficient "modular"
jail design to reduce the jail population while adding most of the new beds
contained in a consultant's earlier proposal, but at about half the cost
and in half the space, according to both presenters.

Later phases will entail a new juvenile detention center, renovations in
another jail building and eventually moving offices to make more room for
more inmates.

The $21.7 million to $23.7 million total price tag, meanwhile, is roughly
the same as the consultant's cost for the first phase alone.

All but one of the council's Republican members lauded the revamped jail
blueprint as a model of getting the most bang for the buck.

Councilman Mark Kingsbury said he wishes the county didn't have to spend
the money on a new jail, but it's become unavoidable.

The alternative, he said, would be to avoid the overcrowding issue until
the state forces the county to build a facility that could cost twice as much.

The jail population last week was hovering around 1,200 inmates, Melton
said. The jail has about 950 qualified beds, Brausch has said.

Gibson said overcrowded conditions could serve as a crime deterrent, and
the county's avoidance of the underlying substance abuse "crisis" boils
down to a lack of compassion.

"It's typical Lottie Gibson," said Councilman Steve Selby, who is up for
re-election in District 18. "Her priority is to get lawbreakers who have
drug and alcohol problems out of the jail and into a hospital environment.

"I believe criminals belong in jail no matter what particular problem
caused them to commit crimes."

Republican Bob Taylor said he agrees that the black community in particular
has a drug and alcohol problem that correlates to local crime, but he would
prefer more stringent enforcement of existing alcohol laws.

"We're actually stealing the economic future from our black communities
with our lottery and our liquor stores," he said. Still, "I don't know that
people's habits are something that's our responsibility. It's a choice they
make, and when they break the law you arrest them."

Case said Gibson has backed a bricks-and-mortar drug treatment center as
long as he's been on the council but that the county's role is
incarceration and punishment.

County's problem?

Cort Flint, a District 24 Democrat, said while there's no way around
building a new jail, the issue of drug abuse is big enough to warrant the
county's attention.

"I have enough education about that subject to believe that it's not just a
choice," Flint said. "I think it's too well-documented that it's a medical
disease."

He added, "People aren't willing to face that, and that's a problem."

Judy Gilstrap, a first-term Democrat, said the new jail is an urgent issue
that needs addressing, but she would also be "strongly in favor" of
addressing underlying substance abuse.

"Whether it's an illness or not, I don't know," she said.

Brausch was appointed interim administrator by Taylor last year and headed
up the effort to streamline the previous jail expansion plan. He responded
to Gibson's criticism of the plan he presented by noting he doesn't
disagree with her claim that prevention should be a priority.

"I'm very sympathetic to that, because obviously if we can keep people from
getting into trouble we wouldn't have to house them," Brausch said, adding
that he had hoped alternative sentencing programs would be enough to
address the county's overcrowding issue.

Still, "Our assignment was not prevention," he said. "Our assignment was
overcrowding in the detention center."

Gibson said there's small likelihood anyone will change the council's
priorities now, although she said it's high time taxpayers hear how the
county is misspending their money by focusing on incarceration instead of a
treatment center for the underlying illness.

"I've already proposed it so many times it isn't funny," she said, "but it
never gets out to people in the community."

Democrats Flint, Gilstrap and Xanthene Norris said they would consider a
county-funded treatment center for inmates.

Kingsbury, Selby, Taylor and Case, all Republicans, said the need should be
addressed by private and state groups.

Kingsbury said he believes substance abuse is a "personal choice," and
"until you hit rock bottom and make a decision you want to change, you're
not going to change."

Flint said he doesn't know all the history behind Gibson's frustration, but
he knows what he's seen in three-plus years on the council.

"Every year I've seen Lottie Gibson ask for money she says she has been
promised by County Council in the past for drug and alcohol abuse," Flint said.

Regardless of her specific aims, he said, the substance abuse that leads to
crime "is a serious enough problem that this county ought to be facing it."