Jackson County Prosecutor Jim Kanatzar confirmed today that, due to a budgetary shortfall, the county's drug court has stopped accepting new clients.
Kanatzar says he made the call to stop accepting new drug court clients in August. "We have a temporary -- and I stress the term 'temporary' -- slowdown of drug court clients until we get through our budget proposals," Kanatzar says. "We want to make sure we just don't overwhelm the system or exceed our capabilities financially ... I fully expect that we will start letting clients back into drug court before the end of the year."
lauded as the crown jewel of programs funded by COMBAT. It is
"geared toward helping people begin their sobriety, find employment or
enroll as full-time students and become productive members of society,"
according to the county's Web site.
Clients receive inpatient and/or outpatient substance abuse treatment,
mental
health and job counseling, drug testing, supervision and case
management. Kanatzar says the court has graduated 1,600 people with a
90th-percentile success rate -- "that is, keeping people out of the [prison] system."
Kanatzar says
there are 409 clients currently in drug court. Of that number, 360
spaces are paid for by the COMBAT tax, and the state pays for services
for the remainder. "As people graduate, they create spaces for others
to come in," Kanatzar says.
So are there people sitting in jail now who would
otherwise be eligible for drug court? Kanatzar says bonds tend to be
set low enough for most candidates to post. "These are non-violent and,
for the most part, first-time offenders, so the drug court client isn't
typically the kind of person who sits in county jail pending the
disposition of their case," he says. "They'll still be considered for
drug court once there's space for them."
Kanatzar wouldn't comment on the exact amount of the drug court's budget shortfall, though a source estimated it at $80,000.
The
salaries of two of the drug court's administrative employees are
currently paid through COMBAT. Kanatzar says that that will change
starting next year, because his office acquired new grants. The grants
will pay for the administrative costs, making all COMBAT proceeds for
drug court available for client services.
Today, drug courts
exist all over the country as alternatives to
imposing jail sentences for first-time and non-violent drug offenders,
though it's probably safe to assume that many operate without the help
of a county-wide sales tax. Recently, reports on the estimated $800,000 price tag on the special election to renew the COMBAT tax in November raised some eyebrows. Did it cross Kanatzar's mind that some of that $800,000 would better spent on funding drug court?
"No,"
Kanatzar says flatly. "I think that's a shortsighted view of this.
Elections cost money, like it or not, and without an election, we won't
have a tax, and without a tax, we won't have a drug court. That's the
price you have to pay for all of the good things COMBAT has done over
the years."
And if voters agree to continue to pay the COMBAT
tax, expect more bragging about all the great stuff COMBAT does. Like
... funding drug court. Most of the time.
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