LAWMAKERS RECOGNIZE VALUE OF STATE'S 46 DRUG COURTS

A small crowd gathers after the lunch hour in front of the Cleveland
County Court House every Thursday. They are not lawyers preparing for
their latest cases to go before judges. They are participants in
Cleveland County's Drug Court, one of 46 such courts in Oklahoma.

Collectively, the courts served more than 2,600 participants and saved
taxpayers $30 million last year. They also gave drug abusers a second
chance to turn their lives around rather than going to prison. The
system combines the outcomes of substance abuse treatment and the
hammer of the court system.

Proponents of drug courts recently came to the state Capitol to make
their case for more state funding. Lawmakers boosted funding for the
courts by $8 million last year. Oklahoma has gone from one court in
1995 to 46 this year.

A study, outlined in The Oklahoma Observer, analyzed the costs of
incarcerating 2,307 offenders versus putting them in drug court.
Prison time would have cost the state $57 million more than drug court
time over four years.

Legislators know the program is no free ride. No violent offenders are
allowed in the program. A team evaluates applicants and pick those
most likely to benefit from staying out of prison, getting treatment
and staying employed. They meet weekly with a judge, a representative
of the district attorney's office and representative of the state's
treatment community.

Rule violators get swift punishment. Sometimes, they are taken from
the weekly meeting to the county jail for breaking the rules. Curfews,
drug tests and jobs are all part of the program.

Graduates are two times less likely to recidivate than standard
probationers and four times less likely to recidivate than an offender
released upon completion of their sentence, The Observer reports.