Justice reform group studies system challenges

DES MOINES - Special drug and mental health courts are cost-effective alternatives to prison for offenders battling addictions or other problems, but funding challenges limit the scope and reach within and beyond the 12 communities currently served, members of a new task force were told Thursday.

Lettie Prell, director of research for the state Department of Corrections, told the Governor's Working Group on Justice Policy Reform, drug-court programs cost about $7,400 per participant per year but have proven that every dollar invested in treating offenders who are diverted from prison carries a $9.60 return over a decade.

'They're good investments,” she said, noting that the state spent nearly $3 million to provide services for 657 offenders through the special courts' program in fiscal 2015.

Judge Kirk Daily, who presides over a drug-court program in Ottumwa, said he prefers the alternative sanctions for offenders who need the 'intense” services to get sober and 'change the way their conduct their lives” to 'just warehousing” them in prison, but he told task force members that issues related to declining funding or underfunding has forced providers to donate services to keep the program running and that is not sustainable.

'I'm here because I think the program works,” Daily told the initial meeting of a working group Gov. Terry Branstad established to consider ways to eliminate inequities within Iowa's criminal justice system. 'If we don't have additional funding, our program will cease to exist and I think they're good programs.”

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller juxtaposed the cost of sending an offender to drug court versus spending up to $33,000 annually to house someone in prison, but Prell said the special-court approach has not been effective across the board noting that of the 1,153 graduates during a study period only 70, or 6 percent, were African Americans.

Along with the drug and mental-health courts, task force members discussed Iowa's jury pool selection process with an eye on identifying and removing biases toward minority offenders, the task force members are to look at jury pool selection, juvenile criminal record confidentiality, and state prison/county jail phone call fees and present a written report by early November so the proposals can be considered during the 2016 legislative session.

The eight-member working group consists of representatives from the Iowa Attorney General's Office, the state court administrator's office, the NAACP, state public defender's office, the Iowa Board of Parole, the state departments of public safety and corrections and the Iowa county attorney's association. The panel is slated to meet again in Des Moines on Sept. 30, Oct. 15 and Oct. 29.