Monday, Apr. 05, 2010

Getting the right mix in our state prisons

Matt Bartle, Guest Columnist

Two weeks ago, the Missouri Senate held a “Rebooting Missouri Government” work day to discuss some cost-saving ideas that will streamline and restructure government.

With the state financially strapped, one of the main proposals to come out of this day was a common recognition that we must do something to reform Missouri’s prison system.

We now spend hundreds of millions of dollars on prisons but we are not getting at the root of the problem for many non-violent offenders.

As the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court told the legislature earlier this year, we must be smarter in the way we approach corrections. We simply do not have the resources to incarcerate certain non-violent offenders in our state prisons — especially those whose underlying issue is an addiction to alcohol or drugs.

We know it costs around $16,000 per year to incarcerate someone and when we send a non-violent offender to state prison, they have a 41 percent chance of returning to prison down the road for future crimes. Incarcerating certain individuals, only to have them come back as a much more hardened criminal, is unworkable.

There is a good alternative. We need to make greater use of the state’s successful drug court program, which has proven to rehabilitate these types of offenders.

Recidivism rates are remarkably lower — around 10 percent — and treatment is allowing thousands of drug court graduates to become productive members of society, able to hold down a job and pay taxes.

For those who will not cooperate with drug court, there must be immediate consequences. They need to be sent to jail quickly — the same day. This helps them realize there is real, tangible punishment for their failure to cooperate, not a possible trip to prison somewhere in the distant future.

We can no longer ignore cost-effectiveness. We must focus on results and move away from the one-size-fits-all mentality of sentencing. The picture at this point is crystal clear: our state doesn’t have the money to waste on ineffective sentencing.

With at least a $500 million budget gap for the upcoming fiscal year, and even more dire revenue projections for next year, we can literally no longer afford to warehouse non-violent offenders in prison when there is a far better way.

Drug courts with treatment for the underlying substance addiction, combined with immediate shock time in county jail, is the direction we must head. Matt Bartle, District 8 senator and a Lee’s Summit resident, is a guest columnist for the Journal. To respond to today’s commentary, call 816-282-7001, or e-mail editor@bluespringsjournal.com.