GIVE DRUG COURT A CHANCE

A drug court is an idea whose time is past due in Milwaukee County, where,
as Journal Sentinel reporters Gina Barton and Mary Zahn pointed out as part
of a series of stories on Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing law, 2,700 felony
drug charges were issued last year and even first-time drug defendants are
often sentenced to hard time.

The Dane County drug court, like many around the nation, is reporting
success, perhaps cutting in half the chances that defendants will re-offend
and thereby keeping prisons from being as clogged as they would be
otherwise. Milwaukee County must give this promising approach a chance.

In a drug court, a judge offers addicted defendants who've been charged
with drug offenses the chance to have their cases dismissed or sentences
reduced if they successfully complete an intensive drug treatment program,
as notes researcher Adele Harrell, of the Urban Institute.

Yes, Milwaukee County considered a drug court once, in 1995. It would have
been given a $500,000 federal grant for the project. But the county turned
down the money - which covered treatment, not court costs - because
officials felt the county would have had to match the grant with too much
of its own funds. Unfortunately, they were being penny-wise and dollar-foolish.

Drug crimes figure prominently in the dramatic rise in prison rolls in the
state and the nation over the last two decades. So such diversion programs
as a drug court should slow or even help reverse that unhappy trend.

Drug courts are not magic bullets. In fact, some grads of treatment
programs won't stay clean. They will relapse into drugs and find themselves
again in the clutches of the law. But the evidence is that drug treatment
is better than no treatment. Harrell says the typical drug court returns $3
for every $1 spent, as a result of cutbacks in crime and prison. The state
could sorely use such savings in Milwaukee County.

All in all, the state has relied too much on expensive incarceration to
fight crime. Keeping bad guys behind bars is an important element of the
crime fight, of course. But overdoing that element can put the state in the
poorhouse without making the streets safer. The state must adopt a more
balanced approach, one part of which should be a drug court in Milwaukee
County.