COURTS FOR CURES

Prison Alternatives Make Sense For State And For Substance Abusers

Cruel as it sounds, some families are surely, quietly relieved when a
relative with a drug problem is finally locked up. At least you know where
he or she is. Your heart can stop jumping every time the phone rings. The
damage is confined to a much smaller circle.

But you also know it's a temporary fix, a reprieve at best. Addicts don't
usually get better in prison and can easily get worse. Yet we continue to
lock them away. Sometimes, this is deservedly so, for those druggies who
commit terrible crimes to feed their habit. But for others, there is a more
effective option -- and more economical, too, than the $17,700 a year it
costs taxpayers to keep a nonviolent junkie in a minimum-security prison or
camp.

Drug courts are slowly gaining acceptance in Michigan and across the nation.
More followup research is needed on their results, but the data so far are
encouraging. Gov. Jennifer Granholm supports the concept, and President
George W. Bush -- not exactly a bleeding heart on criminal justice issues --
last month asked Congress to spend $16 million for drug courts around the
country.

Michigan now has 33 such courts, and a scattering of "sobriety court"
offspring that deal with alcohol addicts. The concept is this: Instead of
prison, the offender gets intensely supervised probation or parole, often
including daily drug testing, counseling, mandatory employment and avoidance
of troublesome people and places. A judge sets up the program and
periodically hauls in the offender for a review. Prison hangs immediately
overhead for those who deviate just once from the straight and narrow.

The cost for the drug court process is about $5,000 per case, and the
supervision runs about $1,850 a year. A typical druggie spends three years
in the program, so that's $10,550 out the door. Done right, it's also three
years clean, three years paying taxes instead of spending them, three years
of keeping a family intact, and maybe, just maybe, a three-year foothold on
a whole new life.

"The key," said Dennis Schrantz, newly appointed chief deputy director of
the state Department of Corrections, "is the judge having a personal
relationship with the offender that is very clear about expectations.

"If you ask these people who go through a drug court what makes a difference
from jail or a treatment program and they will tell you it was because of
the judge."

Schrantz, 49, is rejoining the Department of Corrections as director of
probation, parole and prison camp programs after spending four years in the
Wayne County Department of Community Justice. With the state prison
population approaching 50,000 people, Schrantz says Michigan will be out of
cell space by the end of the year unless some safe and politically palatable
alternatives to incarceration can be developed.

Studies show that about 80 percent of criminals have some kind of substance
abuse problem, and more than half of all prison and jail inmates are locked
up for offenses directly related to their addiction, from drug possession to
stealing or robbing to get money for drugs.

"Prison has not had a lasting and significant impact on chronic drug
abusers," Schrantz said. "Anywhere from 45-70 percent of drug abusing
offenders commit further crimes after having been incarcerated.

"We chill them. We punish them. But we never do anything to address the
underlying problem."

Schrantz believes drug courts can really make a difference with first-time
offenders and with parolees; he said about two-thirds of the new admissions
to state prisons are people who have run afoul of the terms of a probation
or parole.

But Schrantz also recognizes that with the state facing a budget deficit of
up to $2 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, there's no money
available to set up more drug courts.

"We're not proposing anything that is statewide, or even widespread, or very
big," he said. "But it's a great time to do research."

And that is a workable idea that ought to find a spot in the Granholm
budget, which is to be released March 6. The state needs to improve its data
on drug courts, especially on the success rate for keeping first-time
offenders and nonviolent probationers or parolees from going to prison.

Schrantz is confident the numbers will show that drug courts are not only a
cheaper and more effective way of handling offenders, but they are also
better, even safer, for society.

The "throw away the key" thinking of the '90s filled our prisons but didn't
do much about the underlying problems that land people in them. The initial
data from drug courts are more promising than the return rates for the
prison system. A comprehensive analysis is certainly warranted so Michigan
will be ready to move significantly in this direction when money becomes
available.