TREATING DRUG ABUSE

Kentucky's Lt. Gov. Steve Pence gets it when he says that "it's going to be
cheaper in the long run" to provide treatment rather than continuing to
incarcerate large numbers of nonviolent substance abusers.

So Kentucky's new Republican administration, in which Mr. Pence serves also
as justice secretary, has designs on shifting money and priorities. The
Lieutenant Governor outlined to the Senate Judiciary Committee his plans to
expand drug courts, to possibly delay opening a new 1,000-bed prison under
construction in Elliott County; and to eliminate the backlog of evidence
testing in state labs that is slowing prosecutions, especially in drug cases.

Expanding drug courts is deservedly high on this list because they're so
effective. And they are so effective because, while they offer convicted
users alternatives to incarceration, those who get this second chance are
on notice that if they violate their agreements with the drug court,
they'll be carted off to jail quickly.

Budgetary considerations obviously are the reason that more conservative
lawmakers here and nationwide are looking anew at proposals that liberal
opponents of the so-called "prison industrial complex" have been pushing
for years, as the nation's prison population soared to nearly 2 million.
Long mandatory sentences for nonviolent offenders have never made practical
sense, not when it costs Kentuckians about $17,200 a year per inmate. But
being "tough" has made political sense, and also lucrative monetary sense
for the prison corporations and for rural communities clamoring for the
jobs that prisons create.

For example, while Mr. Pence's plans are being widely praised, House
Majority Leader Rocky Adams of Elliott County complained about the negative
economic impact if the new prison doesn't open.

"I'm going to do everything I can to keep that project on schedule," he said.

Wisely, however, Mr. Pence responded that not even 300 new jobs should be
"our driving force on our rate of incarceration."

He's absolutely right.

What's more, the ugly truth about America's prison explosion is that the
raw material feeding the expansion has been African Americans (they're now
about half the inmate population), the poor, the homeless, the illiterate
and the mentally ill.

This shame never should have occurred, but at least it's heartening to see
a credible conservative like Mr. Pence, a former federal prosecutor,
recognizing the mistake and taking the initative to reverse it.