OVERSIGHT LACKING IN 560 DRUG COURTS, SAYS REPORT

WASHINGTON The government is not properly tracking whether 560 drug
courts in the United States, including Birmingham's, are successful
in keeping offenders off drugs and out of jail, according to a report
released Monday.

Those 560 courts, out of 800 total, have received more than $217
million in federal grants since 1995.

The U.S. Department of Justice "continues to lack vital information
on the overall impact of federally funded drug court programs,"
according to a General Accounting Office review. The GAO is the
investigative arm of Congress and studied the issue at the request of
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

The shortcoming is due mostly to bureaucratic difficulties of trying
to collect and manage the right kind of data from the various courts,
the report found.

The locally controlled drug courts provide nonviolent offenders a
chance to answer for their crimes while kicking their drug habits and
avoid jail or have their criminal records cleared.

Sessions' said the GAO report is not meant to indict the drug courts'
purpose but to help Congress determine whether the taxpayer money is
wisely spent.

"The federal government shouldn't spend $200 million on programs it
doesn't have rigorous analysis of," Sessions said Monday.

The GAO recommends several changes for the Drug Court Program Office,
including a way to sanction drug courts that do not report properly
on things like recidivism rates.

In response, the Justice Department called the recommendations
"valuable," and said work has already begun on developing and
managing the necessary national information. Anecdotally, drug court
programs around the country are reporting individual success with low
recidivism rates, cost savings to taxpayers, reunification of parents
with children, improved child support payment records, and fewer
drug-addicted babies born, according to a written response from
Deborah Daniels, assistant attorney general.

District Judge O.L. "Pete" Johnson, who runs Jefferson County's adult
drug court program, said he welcomes a tighter federal review. The
latest local study of Birmingham's program from 1999 showed 13
percent of the drug court graduates get in trouble again within two
years of finishing the program, compared to 50 percent or 60 percent
of all convicts who complete probation or leave prison.

Another study is under way, but it won't necessarily compare fairly
to other courts because they're all run differently.

"That is a problem," Johnson said Monday. "There should be a
checklist of information that all drug courts receiving federal
funding should have to provide on a periodic basis."

Sessions said a complete evaluation could help weed out the poor
programs and highlight the best.

"I believe it's going to show drug courts are effective and are
cheaper than alternatives," he said.