A threadbare public safety net for area drug addicts became even more tenuous last week when the Salvation Army announced a reduction in its treatment program.
No longer will District Court judges have the option of granting parole or probation to nonviolent defendants if they agree to report to the Salvation Army for inpatient treatment of their addictions.
The local charity, whose publicly supported budget is stressed by serving a steady flow of low-income, uninsured people who independently enroll in its treatment program, says it just cannot afford to continue serving the court system without adding a surcharge for each defendant.
Of course, most defendants do not have the means to pay a surcharge and the courts do not have a budget for that expense.
The courts now have these options for defendants who cannot be released without being enrolled in a drug-treatment program:
• Keep them in prison or jail at far greater public expense.
• Assign them to WestCare, a private facility that contracts with local governments to provide health services, including drug treatment.
Unfortunately, WestCare’s drug treatment program is an option existing mostly in theory because of its long waiting list.
The central idea of a proposal that state health officials are offering to address another problem should be applied to this issue. They are drawing attention to the almost daily problem of mentally ill patients’ occupying scarce and expensive beds in hospital emergency rooms — because of a shortage of mental health facilities.
Their proposal is to renovate and reopen a triage center at WestCare that is scheduled for demolition. This plan would enable appropriate but less costly care for 50 mental health patients and relieve the stress on emergency room beds.
Similarly, spending more money on centers for treating drug addiction — centers that are in disgracefully short supply — would enable appropriate care for drug addicts at far less cost than inappropriate incarceration.
Our view is that if the Salvation Army had sufficient public money — enough to offer treatment services to the court system without having to run up a large deficit — taxpayers would realize significant savings over the coming years in the costs of their police departments, court system, jails and prisons.
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