CUTTING PROGRAM FOR ADDICTS WILL COST US, THEM IN LONG RUN

Friday morning was unseasonably warm, and nobody appreciated that more than
Joe Babb. He works outdoors. In fact, he's starting his own landscaping
business. He's also raising his 8-year-old son, and Friday, you might
remember, was Halloween. What a morning - a gorgeous day, an excited child.
How could a father not feel blessed?

Especially Babb. He appreciates what he has. His slice of paradise is of
the paradise-regained variety. He lost it once, and almost forever. He was
a crack addict. He started 12 years ago when he was 29.

For a long time, he was able to maintain a veneer of respectability. He was
married. He had a job. He owned a home. He was a veteran of the Navy. But
everything started to slip away under the weight of his addiction. For four
years, he struggled to break loose from it, but he lost that struggle, and
he ended up losing everything. He found himself in jail. I mean, he really
did find himself in jail.

He was put into the Choices program in the St. Louis County Jail. That is a
120-day program for inmates with drug or alcohol problems. It is an
intensive program.

"It came at a time when God knew I needed that program," Babb told me. "It
was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me."

So Babb got his life together. He has now been clean - no crack, no booze,
not even a smoke - for more than a year and a half. He's one of many who
have been helped by the program. In its five years of existence, it has
served 1,275 inmates. Last year, 92 percent of the inmates who enrolled
completed the course, and 78 percent of these graduates have remained
arrest-free one year out. But as I wrote in Friday's column, the program is
being canceled. The county government has asked all departments to cut
costs 5 percent for 2004, and there is little wiggle room at the jail. The
Justice Services Department is being forced to cut the Choices program.

How can anybody think this makes sense?

Think about the overall financial cost to society. The Choices program is
not cheap. It costs almost $1 million a year. Going full bore, it serves
375 inmates annually. Let's be conservative and say the program has a 50
percent success rate. According to the Missouri Department of Corrections,
the state spends $12,965 a year to keep a person in prison. That does not
include capital costs like prison construction. Still, if Choices keeps
half its enrollees out of prison, it saves the taxpayers $2,430,937.

The financial argument is just one reason Libertarians favor treatment over
incarceration.

They have been joined lately by many conservative followers of Rush
Limbaugh. These conservatives have come to understand that drug addiction
is a medical condition. But even law and order types ought to understand
that the people who need Choices are not asking for the celebrity
treatment. They understand that for them, there are consequences for
breaking the law. Almost all of them are accepted to Choices only after
pleading guilty. This is a jailhouse program. But if addiction is a medical
condition for the wealthy, it ought to be a medical condition for everybody.

In addition to prison costs, there is another financial argument to be made
for Choices. Let's say an addict is put on probation. With his addiction
untreated, he or she is almost certain to continue using. Most addicts have
to steal to support their habits, and if they need $100, they have to steal
$300 worth of stuff. Fences don't pay retail. So the addict not only ends
up going to prison anyway, but he or she costs society money and
aggravation before the prison meter even begins to run.

Finally, there is the human element. The Choices program is another outpost
of the Church of the Second Chance. As regular readers know, I'm a
believer. If you had ever talked to Joe Babb, you would be, too.