DRUG COURT TO OFFER HELP, HOPE

The key to justice is making the punishment fit the crime. By working to
establish a Drug Court, Covington County and the 22nd Judicial District Court
are striving to achieve that - and more. Based on the success rates of other
drug courts throughout the nation, now numbering almost 1,000, by offering
rehabilitation and monitoring to those committing less serious drug offenses,
they will not only mete out punishment to fit the crime, but punishment to
prevent the crime from occurring again.

This just doesn't benefit the offender, it benefits all of society. By taking
alternative action to incarceration, the drug court will accomplish many goals.
They will rehabilitate an offender who might have fallen through the cracks of
assistance otherwise; they will reduce some of the overcrowding in our teeming
prisons; and they will restore to the community, not a jail-hardened
professional criminal, but a contributing member of society.

It might be easier to just round up all drug offenders of all classes, herd
them into court, then throw them into prison immediately upon conviction. The
new court will call for probation officers, counselors, and other court
officers. It will call for training sessions, in-home visits and other
monitoring and education. But easiest is not always best, and in this case, we
believe the benefit will far outweigh the costs in time, money and effort.

The move also gives the offender something he or she may not have experienced
before - a look at a different sort of court, a different sort of system - one
that offers a helping hand even as it administers firm discipline. With that
help, the hand also offers hope, something of which these drug offenders have
had far too little. Here, we see justice tempered with mercy.