Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Sid Salter: Randolph Pushing for Drug Court Expansion Instead of Incarceration

  Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph believes that non-violent offenders who find themselves in trouble with the law over drugs, mental health issues or veterans’ issues should have alternatives available to them that eclipse the old “lock them up and throw away the key” variety.

Randolph, a decorated Vietnam combat infantryman, is not “soft” on crime. On the contrary, Randolph has proved quite capable of bringing the judicial hammer down on violent offenders and those who profiteer on the misery of others. He has served on the high court since 2004, when he was appointed by former Gov. Haley Barbour.


But he likewise recognizes the waste of locking people away who are guilty of nothing more than addiction. Along with the waste of lives and human potential, that strategy carries with it a huge cost in terms of taxpayer support for incarceration.


Randolph was blunt in his assessment: “When we send a druggie to Parchman, it’s $18,000 a year. That is what it costs to maintain a person,” Randolph said. “In drug courts, we spend about $1,200 a person per year.”


Since the inception of intervention courts in Mississippi in Fiscal Year 2012 through this year, 6,990 have “graduated” from the program and 590 drug free babies have been born to program participants.

Some 595 participants earned their GED degree, 4,460 found jobs, 540 attended vocational school, and 1,325 earned a drivers license. All those milestones, Randolph said, help program participants progress from restoration of their lives to redemption.


Over the last decade, the chief justice said Mississippi has realized at least $586.2 million in incarceration savings with another projected $33.74 million in the current fiscal year. Randolph said there were an additional $442.5 million in savings in “societal costs” from drug free infants because of the program.


The jurist said that over the last six years, the program has also generated a total of $17.5 million in fines and fees paid by program participants. Randolph said intervention courts have a recidivism rate of 3.5 % compared to the Mississippi Department of Corrections FY 2012 recidivism rate of 37.4%.


Mississippi has 44 intervention courts. There are 22 adult felony drug intervention court programs – one in each of the state’s 22 circuit court districts. There are four approved adult misdemeanor intervention court programs, 15 juvenile intervention courts, and three family intervention courts. 


The Supreme Court hopes to establish 16 new intervention courts. In 2019, the Mississippi Legislature extended the definition of intervention courts to include veterans and mental health courts. In an effort to comply with this legislative directive, national best practices, standards, rules and policies of multi-state mental health and veteran intervention court were reviewed.


All 50 states utilize some form of intervention courts. Randolph advocates a stronger legislative commitment to funding mental health and veterans’ intervention courts. “The majority of mental health issues before the courts center on individuals who are off their medications,” said Randolph. “With veterans, the problem often lies in not knowing how or where to access benefits and services.”

 

Ill-advised “get tough on crime” laws in Mississippi primarily succeeded in getting tough on the taxpayers. Criminologist Derek Cohen said: “Prison is for people we’re scared of, not the people we’re mad at. In other words, prison is for the people that need to be incapacitated while they receive rehabilitation or while they receive their punishment.”


What prison shouldn’t be is an albatross around the necks of the taxpayers who are forced by archaic laws that don’t consider modern technologies to stack and warehouse prisoner in a manner that punishes taxpayers to a greater degree than prisoners.


Chief Justice Randolph’s advocacy is noble from the standpoint of the Christian sensibilities of redemption. But saints and sinners alike recognize the fiscal folly of warehousing people who are more in need of treatment than of punishment. Intervention courts are good public policy from both perspectives.


Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.



21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok.

Anonymous said...

For the most part drug court is nothing but a joke. I am all for doing everything you can to help an individual get there lives straight so don't take this wrong. If anyone from drug court tells you its for first time offenders and its a one chance opportunity for an individual they are telling you a lie. It's become nothing but a money making machine and there is no oversight. In the county I live in I have seen arsonist and thieves get placed in drug court. When a police office makes a felony arrest he has about an hours worth of paperwork to fill out and these damn justice court judges in my county will turn them loose in 15 minutes with an ankle monitor. Total BS in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Drugs will ruin your life, here's a felony conviction to ensure it does.....

Anonymous said...

Haley Barbour did many good things for Mississippi as governor, but his judicial appointments were dictated solely by cronyism and patronage. It has cost the state dearly.

Anonymous said...

9:06 You are 100% correct. I also believe that people should be held accountable.

Anonymous said...

Nationwide we are attempting to treat the symptoms and not the disease. Penalties must be so severe for drug manufacturers, traffickers and dealers that they will not risk their lives to ply their trade. Yes, their lives. Secondly, we must put a stop to the flow of people and drugs in from Mexico.

Anonymous said...

Idk, have we missed the boat on separating the various offenders into different prison systems ? Murder folks go to murder prison. Drug folks go to drug prison and so on and so forth .....y'all get the point. Democrats should love this idea since they love building new prisons every 10 years when a toilet goes bad.

Anonymous said...

Every single person that comments on how Drug Court is worthless, or lock 'em up, are part of the problem. Addiction is not a religious or willpower problem -- it is a recognized medical disease by the AMA. Your comments only highlight how uneducated and/or uninformed you are. Recidivism rates for alcoholics/drug addicts are somewhere in the 95% range. Even under a 20% efficacy success rate of treatment (more intensive than drug court), you cut the recidivism rate saving not only valuable tax dollars, but also valuable lives not only from the addicts but also the public, e.g., lower mortality rates from less DUI incidents. So please stop with all your "tough on crime" comments that do not address the real issue because a sober alcoholic/addict is not committing future crimes -- they become productive members of society, which is better than locking them up. This is exactly what Justice Roberts is trying to achieve and you should support that if you care about your state and fellow Mississippians.

Anonymous said...

Make possession of 14 or less grams of Weed a misdemeanor and 75% of the drug court cases will go away and free up the court system .

Anonymous said...

Kingfish, you could save money by not carrying Sid Salters' columns - they are widely available elsewhere. He already has a full-time job & doesn't add anything significant to any discussion. He's a "nice-to-do" at best. I say this as a regular donor to your blog.

Anonymous said...

@1:10 PM
Lmaooooo @ fake donating to a blog

Heath said...

I’m a drug court graduate. I’m clean and sober going on sixteen years now. I’m now the head chaplain for a large hospital and a therapist. Drug court saved my life. It works. The more we invest in it, the more it can help others. I’m not special. I was as pathetic a junkie as any other in the system when I got my chance at drug court. If I hadn’t gotten in drug court, I might be sixteen years into a nineteen year prison sentence. I’m not ashamed of my story. I’m grateful for the grace afforded me and only hopeful that others get the same mix of grace and consequences that I received. It works. If you don’t believe me, let me buy you a cup of coffee and tell you about it.

Anonymous said...

The majority of Drug courts in Mississippi aren’t really drug courts as defined by the NADCP (National Association of Drug Court Professionals).

It’s a money making scheme. Money has not been saved in drug courts because the majority of those in drug courts should not be. They should be in some type of pretrial intervention. I.E. we are adding to costs and “making” money/creating jobs.

For example, the Desoto county drug court, perhaps the worst offender, has a slush fund of over a million dollars. Where did that money come from? Fees from the participants who are paying into a program only to avoid jail. They aren’t receiving services that they need OR they should not be there in the first place.

Anonymous said...

Penalties must be so severe for drug manufacturers....yes if they're illegal.

Blaming a drug manufacturer for your addiction is a cop out.

Had a near fatal aviation accident and when I left the hospital, was give a whole handful of Rx's. They all had a very noticeable warning in BIG BOLD LETTERS that the drugs could be habit forming and to use caution when taking.

Myself and many others took these drugs with no problems by applying common sense on what to take, how many to take and when...You don't take an 150 mg Opioid for a headache or muscle ache when two or 3 Tylenol will do, but then again I've seen the Karens you ended up married to, along with your woke kids yelling how they need a new iPhone 13 or MX‑5 Miata Roadster to look good driving up to their favorite watering hole in Fondrenville.

Whatever the excuses, it still boils down to personal responsibility. I'm tried of the "it's all someone else's fault, I'm just the victim" mentality. Don't care if it's Opioids, Crack, Cocaine or the old standbys of huff'n paint, compressed air or airplane glue. Stupid is stupid, you made that choice, but I'm for giving someone at least one choice to clean up their act.

Anonymous said...

346 - just where 'should' those in your DeSoto County drug courts be? Were they charged with and admitted to having committed a drug crime? If so, then their choice could be Drug Court or regular court; reporting weekly paying their fine or hanging around in the joint.

Maybe your thought is that there shouldn't be a crime for the drugs, and if that is the case, then we will just start off disagreeing. But if that's not the case - where do you think those folks 'should be'?

Anonymous said...

@2:19. I appreciate you sharing your story.

Anonymous said...

7:30, I already said they should be in pretrial programs that are allowed under the law now. It’s a money making scheme and the only reason Randolph is interested is because it’s politically popular. There are good drug courts in our state but the
majority are not.

Of course, Legalizing everything is the common sense solution. It’s coming sooner rather than later, thankfully.

Anonymous said...

If our society had adopted a no-tolerance policy on drugs back in the 50's and 60's we wouldn't be dealing with this s--t.

Other countries figured out early on the way not to have drug problems was not to have drugs.

Now, we want to legalize it, release the poor souls that ruined their lives with the stuff and "help" those same individuals.

I'm tired of this drug merry-go-round.

Anonymous said...

I agree with having drug courts, if I am to believe the stats and testimony of successful completers. However, Randolph's use of the 'it costs less than a year of incarceration' card is ill-based. At best, that's an emotional argument. At worst, the argument is financial...neither of which should reflect our goal.

And while Salter throws in the use of veteran's issues, another emotional soft-ball, he would do well to research (if possible) the high number of veterans who spend most of their time trying to increase their benefits and their VA Percent Disability status through the use of drugs with the required assistance of VA psychiatrists.

Without the assistance and nudging of VA psychiatrists, the incidence of drug problems among veterans would be far less than that of the general population. Bogus disability ratings and stolen valor are real things.

Anonymous said...

@ 9:52 you spelled Phil Bryant wrong

Anonymous said...

The only drug courts in this state that work are funded by federal grants. You can not send someone to rehab for $1500 a year. You can’t put them in sober living for $1500 a year. Truthfully it costs $18k to send someone to a 30-90 day inpatient treatment facility and transition to a sober living home for another year. Then they will need psychological counseling and behavioral counseling for many years. $1300 is a sick twisted jokes


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