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The Costs

It costs between $13,000 and $16,000 to incarcerate an offender for 12 to 14 months– the average amount of time it takes to complete a drug court program which is typically less than $6500. If more than 1,600 individuals with substance abuse problems reoffend and reenter the system five or more times, the costs for merely housing them will run into the tens of millions of dollars. This gargantuan bill does not guarantee any funding for substance abuse counseling or treatment, and the State’s penal institutions generally do not provide such treatment. While an often repeated mantra used when discussing drug offenders has been, “Lock them up and throw away the key,” the reality is most offenders will be back on the streets within one year of incarceration, and those who do not receive counseling and treatment will continue to offend. The jailhouse door will become little more than a turnstile.

A New Approach

Returning to a lifestyle of drug abuse is, for those who have received no substance abuse counseling or life skills training while incarcerated, often an inevitable choice. It does not have to be that way. Some Texas drug courts with established track records are making a difference in the lives of would-be repeat offenders.

Statewide data shows that individuals who completed a Texas drug court program had a two-year arrest rate of 19.50% and a two-year incarceration rate of 1.00%, while similarly situated non-drug court program offenders had a two-year arrest rate of 46.90% and a two-year incarceration rate of 19.70%. (The Steward Research Group. Racial Disparities in the Texas Criminal Justice System, New study reveals reallocation of state funds to increasing the effectiveness of the Texas Criminal Justice System May, 22, 2003).

Harris County STAR Drug Court graduates have a total re-arrest rate of 7.8% three years after graduation. (“Evaluation of the Harris County Drug Court Program,” DIR, 2007).

As Mary Covington, program manager of Harris County Drug Court’s Success Through Addiction Recovery (STAR) program, observed, addiction is a disease and the most effective solution is treatment. “Clearly, nobody wants to be an addict,” Covington said. “Nobody wakes up one morning at the age of 15 and says, ‘I think I’ll see what I can do to completely destroy my life.”

Donations can be sent by check to:

Harris County Drug Court Foundation
3217 Montrose Boulevard
Houston, Texas 77006

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