Saving lives, money

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a former attorney who saw flaws in purely punitive law enforcement, championed the restorative-justice model immediately after taking office. In 2001, he and city prosecutor Sim Gill began devising programs that had at their cores the driving principle behind restorative justice: that many kinds of criminal activity have their roots not in a bad soul but in a curable problem.

Criminal justice, Anderson said, too often focuses on "tremendous humiliation and punishment," resulting in shame but no healing for crimes ranging from sex solicitation to drug addiction to domestic violence.

Through a network of law enforcement programs, special courts and social services, restorative justice aims to address the root causes of these crimes — without ignoring the personal responsibility offenders bear.

It's difficult to measure just how well Salt Lake's restorative-justice model is working. Statistics on recidivism and the costs associated with the programs are hard to come by because many of the programs are only two or three years old and have relatively few participants.

But in theory at least, the program saves taxpayers money — sometimes a lot.

For example, 331 people have gone through the Mental Health Court, with 55 people having graduated from the programs the court prescribes. Gill said the outpatient care typically required for program graduates is significantly cheaper than the in-patient care often used by other mentally ill offenders — $1,500 vs. $13,000.

Drug courts often result in treatments that cost $10-$15 daily, as opposed to the $68-$72 it costs for a day of incarceration.

And there's the long-run money saved by cutting down on recidivism and curing the core problem, which reduces future law enforcement, court and social-services costs.

"We're finding out that the more continuity of care we can get you, once we get you on the right track, will save money and resources," Gill said.

A support system

Getting offenders back on track, so the theory goes, is a lot easier once you understand how they got off track in the first place.

Gary Goddard, 42, was on the path to trouble years before his life fell apart. He had been an alcoholic since he was 13 years old, he said, but he was a functioning alcoholic.

He had a family — a wife and an adopted child, as well as a mentally ill brother under his care — and a lot of responsibility. He also drank a lot.