DRUG CRIMES, AND COSTS, SOARING

It starts with a little shopping at a local store.

A 38-year-old father of two makes the rounds picking up ingredients used to
make meth. He is spotted by employees trained to look for this activity and
city police are notified.

A squad car soon arrives and the suspect is taken into custody and his
vehicle searched. Officers seize a meth lab, a quantity of meth and the
items the man has just purchased to make more of the illegal drug.

He is arrested and lodged at the local detention facility for manufacturing
meth.

A month later, he is indicted by a Henderson County grand jury. Four months
after that, he pleads guilty to an amended charge of facilitation to
manufacture meth. Another three months passes and he is sentenced to two
years in prison.

His absence costs his family emotionally and financially.

His presence at a detention facility costs you and me.

Records provided by the commonwealth's attorney's office show that thus far
in this year alone 115 people have been convicted here of drug charges.

The annual cost of housing 115 county inmates at the Henderson County
Detention Center? More than $1.1 million.

At a state facility, the annual cost for the 115 would be just under $2
million.

According to Col. Ron Herrington, chief deputy jailer at the county jail,
the estimated daily cost of incarceration at the local facility is about
$27.50.

The cost-per-day includes personnel, linens, food, health care, utilities,
and programs such as GED courses, AA, drug abuse treatment and religious
meetings, Herrington said. It also includes a program to help inmates
transition back into the work force.

On a side note, county prisoners are supposed to pay for the time they are
incarcerated and any medical bills incurred, Herrington said. But
invariably many of those debts aren't paid. In fact, jail officials say
former inmates collectively owe in the neighborhood of $1.2 million.

At a state facility in 2003, the average daily cost to incarcerate someone
is $47.11.

Lisa Lamb, spokeswoman with the Department of Corrections, said that figure
includes everything from salaries to the prisons' other operating expenses.

"That cost per day is strictly taxpayer dollars," she said.

Taxpayers pay the bill, Herrington said. "They are the ones who have to pay
for running the facility."

Though it is difficult to place a price tag on the overall cost to society
of drug trafficking and related crimes, law enforcement officials see
first-hand that it is staggering.

As an example, Herrington said that if the local jail were emptied of those
incarcerated because of drug charges or because they committed a crime to
get money for drugs, virtually the entire inmate population would be gone.

"We have very few rapists and murderers," he said. "But the drugs..."

Locally, the number of drug arrests and convictions is soaring, pushing
jail inmate numbers -- and costs -- upward.

Just three years ago, a count showed that the local jail housed 180 state
inmates and 80 county inmates, Herrington explained. In a recent count,
there were 170 county inmates and 52 state inmates.

"Most of it is drug related," he said.

Commonwealth's Attorney Bill Markwell said that 75 percent of his caseload
is directly or indirectly related to drugs.

"That's a conservative estimate," he said.

A lot of crimes, such as check forgeries and burglaries, are indirectly
related to drugs as people commit those crimes to get money to support
their habit, he said.

Part of the cost of incarceration includes programs designed to help
inmates hurdle drug-abuse problems and prevent them from finding themselves
behind bars again.

Such rehab programs are not inexpensive.

Chris Block with the state Department of Corrections said that the most
recent alcohol/drug rehab costs (for year 2000) were $2,200 per person for
six months.

Block, administrator for the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse
Program, said resources are limited and therefore many inmates go untreated.

"In Kentucky, 60 percent of incarcerated people and (those) on probation or
parole meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol and drug dependency," he
said, adding that that percentage is probably conservative.

In the recent fiscal year, 9,015 people were paroled or served out their
sentence, Brock said. Of that number, Brock said 5,409 could have benefited
from treatment.

So how many actually got help?

"We can only treat about 19 percent while they are incarcerated," he said.
Nineteen percent of 5,409 comes to an estimated 1,027 inmates that get
treatment. It's a resource problem. We don't have the resources to treat
all who need to be treated."

The cost of drug-related crime reaches well beyond the burden it places on
jails and prisons, Markwell pointed out. When someone is convicted of drug
charges and sentenced to prison, it creates a costly ripple effect.

Children lose parents. Additional financial burdens are placed on the
parent or guardian -- or social service program -- left to support those
children.

In many cases, the workplace loses an employee and the marketplace loses
the money the employee would have spent in the community. And on and on it
goes.

The drug problem, Markwell sighed, "is growing exponentially."

As are the costs -- financial and societal.