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Butts:
intervention or prevention?
By Bob Robinson
GREENVILLE – “Put 100 people in a local inpatient treatment facility
who are not ready to beat their addiction, you will have zero percent
success,” said Greenville Police Chief Dennis Butts. Add to that, it’s
expensive. Local estimates range from $700 to $800 a day. The national
average is $898 a day.
An inpatient program needs a minimum of 28 days to (hopefully) get an
addict clean. Figuring the halfway cost ($800 a day)… $22,400 per
person. According to one source, inpatient treatment involves hospital
settings with day and night specialized medical staff and defined
service provider to patient ratios. It also typically involves a
secured environment. It’s expensive to start up, staff, operate and
maintain.
Darke County Sheriff Chief Deputy Mark Whittaker has raised the
question a number of times, making his point at a recent Chamber of
Commerce event: “This is a community problem. We can’t arrest ourselves
out of this,” he said. So what to do? He raised two possibilities: the
inpatient facility and prevention efforts in schools.
If someone has a true drug addiction, it’s a life-long issue. Whittaker
repeated in layman’s terms what a physician told him… “Once someone has
a true addiction, it rewires the brain.” They could be clean for years
but under the right circumstances, their need for drugs could return
just as strong as before.
He noted even with an inpatient facility the risk of recidivism is
still high. “Recovery has to be comprehensive,” he said. “There needs
to be mental health and support components…
“And the person has to be willing.” Whittaker recalled an inmate at the
Darke County jail who told him “when I get out of here I’m going to get
my drugs again.”
Butts agreed with Whittaker. “If they aren’t willing, you’re throwing
dollars away. You spend the dollars on those who want to quit.” Butts
added it has to include education and job skills.
Often someone gets clean – either at MonDay or in jail – and has
nowhere to go but back to the same environment that got them into drugs
in the first place. “If I teach a person a viable skill,” Butts said,
“they can get a decent job, make a decent living and find a place to
live in a different environment.”
A group of community, business, school, health and law enforcement
leaders met this week to begin discussions on the problem. Whittaker
indicated they would be looking at options, the Sheriff’s Department
would like to see uniformed officers back in school.
“For a number of reasons. Safety and security, positive role models…
mentors, counseling and education.” Whittaker would work with local
police departments to provide a uniformed officer to each of the six
Darke County schools 20 hours a week.
“This would require three officers. We need to find out where the other
departments are with this, get these folks involved… what do the people
want? How do we pay for it?”
Greenville hopes to put a resource officer in its schools as well.
Butts noted this was early in discussion, but would like to see a
fulltime officer by next year. Lt. Steve Strick, Greenville Police
Department information officer, said he’s been told to look into it…
“See if I can make it happen.”
Ohio has taken an active role in addressing the problem. Information is
available for parents and other caregivers at starttalking.ohio.gov.
Butts summarized the options… “Do we concentrate on intervention or
prevention?” Approaches are being weighed. There seems to be no
disagreement something has to be done. Aside from the financial burden
there is a cost in lives. Since 1996 there have been 78 drug-related
deaths in Darke County.
Both approaches cost money, however there is also a cost to the current
growth in drug-related crimes. The Sheriff’s Department has advised
anywhere from 60 to 85 percent of those in jail are there for
drug-related crimes.
The latest estimates show it costs $30,000 a year to keep one person in
prison; $60 a day (or $21,900 a year) to keep a person in jail. But
that’s only part of the story. According to Strick the ‘hidden’ cost
could go something like this: There’s a call for service, fuel for the
vehicle, the physical arrest (if necessary), transportation to the
police station for processing, transporting the person to the jail, one
to one-and-a-half hours for paperwork, pick the individual up at jail,
send the officer(s) to the court for testimony, a not guilty plea…
The sheriff has jail staff, provides food and medical attention; then
there’s the judicial, prosecution and defense parts of the equation.
After that it’s back to jail, off to prison or back on the streets
under the eye of the probation department.
“Sometimes our officers check in then head to the courtroom. The case
gets pled out or dismissed and we’ve lost street time for our
officers,” he said. “Sometimes this happens before the trial date and
we never get notification. More lost time.”
National statistics on the total cost of drug related crimes were not
available, although there was no disagreement the cost was rising. One
site notes between 1982 and 2006, the cost of law enforcement has gone
up 420 percent, corrections 660 percent and judicial system 503 percent.
Published courtesy
of The Early Bird
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