PRISONS AREN'T WORKING, SO LET'S EXPAND DRUG COURT

State Attorney Angela Corey has a point.

Some of the offenders who were recommended for post-conviction drug
court might have been more likely to use their freedom to wreak mayhem
than seriously work on curing their drug habit.

She's also right about it being the state's duty to protect the
public.

Yet, it's disturbing that politics and personalities reverberating
between Corey, Court Administrator Joe Stelma and Chief Circuit Judge
Donald Moran may have conspired to deny drug offenders a chance to
clean up their act through a post-conviction drug court - a dispute
that led to it being shut down after court officials lost a $1.4
million grant to fund it.

More disturbing is the fact that some prosecutors in Corey's office
cling to the notion that Florida ought to build more prisons instead
of rehabilitating drug offenders.

Florida is facing a $3 billion shortfall.

Prisons consume 11 percent of the general fund.

Already, more than 100,000 people are locked up at the cost of more
than $20,000 per person per year.

This makes no sense - especially when drug courts are showing signs of
promise in stopping drug abusers from offending again.

And the prison experiment has been going on for more than 25
years.

According to e-mails obtained by The Times-Union under Florida's
public records law, when drug court coordinator Kelly Zarle wrote in
January that it is more costly to incarcerate drug offenders "only for
them to come out and re-offend," Sandra Rosendale, an assistant state
attorney, replied: "I disagree with you, all due respect, but I think
they should just build more prisons ... at least if they are
incarcerated, people's lives will be saved ..."

Rosendale's answer - more prisons to lock up more people - is one
reason why Corey's office can't find many drug offenders suitable for
post-conviction drug court.

That's probably because many of those offenders, who are known as
"mature drug users," received jail or prison time instead of
rehabilitation a long time ago. Had they gotten the type of
rehabilitation that is being advocated in the drug courts, they might
not have amassed longer rap sheets.

According to a study by The Sentencing Project, a research
organization that advocates on behalf of prison reform, most drug
courts seem to be showing at least modest signs of success, even
though questions abound as to whether they are the best solution for
offenders with severe addictions and the pathologies that are
associated with it.

But, says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, it
is still smarter to give post-conviction drug courts a try instead of
hewing to the failed fallback of prison.

"If prisons were working, then why are you having to build more of
them?" Mauer asked.

It's understandable that prosecutors would recoil at the thought of
releasing dangerous people into the community. I agree that each case,
particularly post-conviction drug cases, ought to be
scrutinized.

But what they need to understand is that stability in a community
isn't just tied to removing people who commit drug offenses from it,
but by giving them a chance at redemption.

And, over the years, the mass imprisonment of people who commit
non-violent drug crimes has cost communities both socially and
culturally. Incarceration ought to be an aberration, but because so
many people - mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters - have been getting
locked up for minor drug offenses it is now seen, by many, as a constant.

Florida taxpayers could paymore than $862 million in 2015 for new
prisons, reports the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government
Accountability.

That's why it's time to try more alternatives like post-conviction
drug courts - because that's too much money to keep wasting on failure.