COUNTY COULD SAVE MILLIONS

The savings could be huge if Wisconsin treated-instead of
jailed-small-time drug offenders, a study has concluded.

The state, including its counties, could save half a billion dollars a
year in the long run, and Rock County could save $18 million a year if
low-level nonviolent drug offenders received treatment instead of time
behind bars, according to a study released today by an organization
called Justice Strategies.

Justice Strategies credited legislative leaders-chiefly state Sen.
Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, and Rep. Gary Bies, R-Sister Bay-for
requesting the study, which was commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance.

According to its Web site, Drug Policy Alliance is "the nation's
leading organization working to end the war on drugs. We envision new
drug policies based on science, compassion, health and human rights
and a just society in which the fears, prejudices and punitive
prohibitions of today are no more."

Among the study's findings:

- -- Wisconsin's prison population has doubled from 11,000 to 22,000
since 1995. Since 2000, 60 percent of new prisoners are behind bars
for substance-abuse offenses, including drunken driving.

- -- 2,900 Wisconsin residents with minimal criminal histories are
serving time for low-level, nonviolent offenses. The annual cost of
keeping them in prison is $28,622 per prisoner.

- -- In 1993, the state's corrections budget was about $278 million. By
last year, it had ballooned to $1 billion.

- -- Wisconsin spends more per capita on corrections than any other
Midwestern state.

- -- For $8,100 per person, Wisconsin could provide quality substance
abuse treatment, case management, probation supervision and support
services.

- -- While rates of drug use are 7.2 percent for Latinos, 8.1 percent
for whites and 8.7 percent for blacks, African-Americans are
imprisoned at 37 times the rate of whites in Wisconsin and Latinos are
imprisoned at nine times the rate for whites.

"The evidence is overwhelming that incarceration is the least
effective and most costly strategy for reducing drug use and crime,"
according to the study's highlight brochure.

The study cited findings reached by the Rand Corp.'s Drug Policy
Research Center that for people prosecuted on federal cocaine charges
"residential drug treatment programs are 15 times more effective at
reducing serious crime than mandatory minimum prison sentences."

In its executive summary, the "Treatment Instead of Prisons" study
says:

"There is growing recognition that the state's current approach does
little to reduce substance abuse or to enhance public safety because
it asks the impossible of law enforcement and corrections: compel
addicts to clean up without offering them adequate treatment."

The study recommends that the Legislature should increase funding for
community-based substance abuse treatment by $22 million per year.

"Such an investment would allow the state to make quality treatment
available to 3,000 people convicted of felony drug, property and
drunken-driving offenses each year, including over 1,100 who would
otherwise by prison-bound," according to the study.