DRUG COURT COSTS WELL WORTH PAYING

Our View: Spokane County commissioners made a wise investment in restoring
at-risk lives and reducing crime.

In the midst of a taxpayer rebellion, cost-conscious public officials don't
spend money on nonessentials unless they have a clear vision of an adequate
payback.

Tuesday's funding decision by the Board of Spokane County Commissioners is
therefore a show of well-deserved confidence in the county's four-year-old
drug court program.

The commissioners came up with more than $88,000 to carry the program to the
end of the year once current federal funding expires June 30. Part of the
county appropriation will secure an additional $50,000 in federal funds that
depended on local matching money.

Four years ago, Spokane County joined a handful of other counties trying out
the innovative program. It steers nonviolent drug offenders into a
high-intensity treatment program -- a program many knowledgeable officials
insist is tougher than incarceration and produces much better longterm
results.

Today, hundreds of local jurisdictions have adopted the drug court concept
as a proven method of easing the demand for expensive jail and prison cells
and, more important, reducing the rate at which substance abusers reoffend.
Experience shows that drug court participants return to criminal patterns
less than 25 percent as often as similar offenders who take the more
conventional path through the corrections system.

Payoffs to the community -- whose tax dollars are entrusted to the
commissioners -- are substantial. It's not just that sending an offender
through drug court costs about one-tenth of what it would cost to send him
to prison. It also reduces the costs society bears when crimes are committed
to support drug habits or while under their influence.

Turning at-risk lives around also reduces the level of social decay
associated with drug abuse, giving would-be drains on the public treasury
the chance to be contributors.

These and other promises of the drug court system are well documented in
Spokane County and in other jurisdictions, but that doesn't make it easy for
the keepers of the budget to invest scarce resources in nontraditional
methods.

For now, the commissioners have pledged funds only for the rest of this
year. When and if they commit the $286,000 it would take to continue the
program through 2002 will depend on a closer review the commissioners plan
to take.

Scrutiny is no threat. If efficiencies can be found without sacrificing the
effectiveness of the program, so much the better. The important thing for
now is that the county commissioners have found drug court, and its positive
impact on community life, as a sound expenditure of public funds.