JAILING DRUG CONVICTS COSTS US BILLIONS

Study Urges Options to 'Revolving Door'

Illinois prisons are bursting at the seams with drug offenders, even
though violent crime has steadily decreased across the state over the
past two decades.

People convicted of drug offenses constitute about 40 percent of
prison admissions in Illinois, according to a report by Chicago
Metropolis 2020, a business-based planning group. The study warned
that taxpayers pay about $7 billion a year for the state's criminal
justice system -- and called for a bigger emphasis on drug prevention.

The number of Chicago area residents headed to prison for drug crimes
has increased nearly 2,000 percent in the past 20 years, from 469 in
1985 to 8,755 in 2005, according to the study, called the 2006 Crime
and Justice Index.

About half of drug convicts are back on the street within a year of
getting locked up, and half of them will be in trouble with the law in
a short time, said Paula Wolff, senior executive at Chicago Metropolis
2020.

"The revolving door is expensive to taxpayers," she said. "It diverts
money that could go to education and other services needed by those
who don't break the law."

Treatment Program Praised

The study praised the drug treatment program at Sheridan Correctional
Center as "showing great promise." Inmates released from the program
were 44 percent less likely to return to prison than those in a
comparison group, the study said.

The report also stressed that reports of some types of crime have
spiked -- even as violent crime as a whole decreased since 1991.

Reported elder-abuse cases, for instance, rose 84 percent from 1983 to
2003. It's unclear how much of that rise in reporting is due to
increased awareness of the crime.