IT'S SENSELESS TO DROP A PROGRAM THAT WORKS AND SAVES MONEY

We taxpayers always shake our head in disgust when we hear how much tax
money is spent incarcerating nonviolent offenders. Niagara County has been
fortunate to have a program that eliminates some of the expensive
incarceration costs that we pay for. That program is the Treatment
Alternatives to Street Crime.

Recently the members of the Niagara County Legislative Finance Committee
discussed eliminating Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime. Sound
familiar? If a "department" generates or saves taxpayer money, and pays for
itself, eliminate it.

The Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime program is an alternative to
expensive incarceration. It is designed to reduce the burdens on the
criminal-justice system by providing treatment for jail-bound, nonviolent
individuals. By providing a treatment and recovery program with intensive
monitoring, these individuals are given one chance at making permanent
positive lifestyle changes. It links the individual with treatment,
monitors their progress, strictly insures their compliance and reports to
the courts and probation each individual's progress.

The total budget for the program is approximately $212,000 a year. The
county is responsible for approximately $106,000 of the budget, and the
state State Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives provides
the county with matching dollars.

For example, in 2000, the program saved taxpayers just shy of $2 million.
The county saved $475,000, and the state saved $1.4 million in
incarceration costs. In 2001, the program saved taxpayers over $1.5
million, almost $600,000 for the county and more than $1 million for the
state in incarceration costs. Thus far in 2002, the program will meet or
exceed the previous years and save the taxpayers expensive incarceration
costs again.

One has only to review these dollar amounts to see that the program they
are thinking of eliminating saves the county more than three times what it
costs to run. It is a mistake to eliminate a program that not only saves
the county more than $600,000 each year in local incarceration costs but
also offers Niagara County residents, especially youth, a second chance to
overcome their drug and alcohol problems so that they can become productive
law-abiding citizens!

I strongly ask my fellow taxpayers to contact the Niagara County
Legislature and especially members of the Finance Committee and urge them
to keep the program. It saves the taxpayers money and has proven to turn
nonviolent offenders into becoming taxpayers themselves.

W.D. Skip Cooper

Niagara Falls