GOPideas... ideas done right

As state governments begin to determine how to balance their budgets, they are in desperate need of ideas to cut costs. One of the best possible ideas is to implement drug courts. Currently, about 55,000 people are adjudicated through drug courts every year, although about 1.5 million people meet eligibility guidelines. Drug courts reduce recidivism, save incarceration expenses and allow participants to remain in productive society. The current budget crises throughout the states should serve as impetus to expand their implementation.

One of the factors that could speed the implementation of this idea is the practice of releasing criminals into the general population to reduce incarceration costs. My home state of Illinois is releasing criminals early and California is in a larger bind because they are convicting criminals faster than they are building prisons and have been ordered to either release criminals or build more prisons. Given that the state is broke, the choice seems predetermined. However, if the state is going to spend money catching, prosecuting and sentencing people, why would they then turn around and release those people? If they are going to end up back on the street anyway, why not cut out the middleman and save the money? Drug courts make the best of a difficult situation by providing a significant ROI.

Like a business, drug courts deliver superior ROI because they are focused on a specific niche: substance abuse-related offenses. These courts combine a desire for justice with improving lives: forcing participants to undertake specific steps to end their addition while keeping people out of jail and in the workforce. Research from academic studies to the GAO to the Office of National Drug Control Policy has shown that such courts are immensely effective in numerous areas. Republicans should be most interested in the cost differential: it costs approximately $2,000 per year to process someone through drug court and about $23,000 to incarcerate someone. As of 2007, there were over 253,000 prisoners in state jails for drug offenses and previous studies have shown that 58% of drug-related prisoners have no history of violent crime or heavy substance abuse. Regardless of one's position on drug policy, the data leads to a very simple conclusion: we are locking up people who do not pose a threat to themselves or their community, but are in need of help --- and helping them is far more cost effective than locking them up.

The cost effectiveness of drug courts is not only in the cost per inmate/adjudicant, but also in the long-term economic and social costs. Participants in drug courts can maintain jobs, maintain links with their community and avoid the stigma of a prison sentence, all of which lead to greater tax revenues for the state. More importantly, the recidivism rate for incarcerated criminals is alarming (my research indicates between 50-80% depending on the parameters of the study). Thus, once someone is put in prison, even if they are nonviolent, they are likely to return to prison --- costing even more money in both costs to the state (incarceration), cost to society (victims of future crime) and foregone benefits (tax revenues).

So, if you're a fiscal conservative, promote drug courts: they reduce immediate costs, create long term benefit and prevent people's lives from being disrupted --- what's not to approve?