Utah may send fewer drug offenders to prison

With the state prison population climbing and the Department of Corrections seeking more money for more prison beds, lawmakers on Wednesday agreed to support a measure to reform sentencing for drug offenders and ultimately send fewer offenders to prison.

The Drug Offender's Reform Act (DORA) would fund better substance abuse assessment and treatment, and give judges the option to redirect convicted offenders from prison to community-based programming.

Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, will make his second attempt to get the bill through the Legislature in 2005.

"Last year, we passed this out as a committee bill," Buttars reminded his colleagues before the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee gave its unanimous support. "It's hard to change something that you've been doing the same way for 100 years, but we need to."

DORA could save the state millions, Buttars said.

Over time, the bill's proposed reforms would ease the ever-burgeoning prison population, which two weeks ago crested at a record 6,001 inmates. Over the past two years the Department of Corrections has seen a steady increase in the number of inmates, with women offenders as the fastest-growing segment of the prison population.

Nearly 90 percent of those sentenced to prison have an identified substance-abuse problem, Department of Corrections officials have said.

The bill would be phased in over three years, costing $6.3 million, $12.1 million and $16.7 million respectively. The number of treatment slots in the first year would be 500; with 1,500 the second and 2,069 in year three, according to information from the state Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ), which researched and drafted the proposal last year.

CCJJ Executive Director Ed McConkie said his staff looked to states like Texas, Kansas and others for direction, where similar reforms are in process.

At the request of newly elected Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, CCJJ staff also looked at less-expensive options.

"Every option came out to be a unanimous conclusion by (CCJJ) staff as a legitimate enhancement to the existing system, but it was not reform," McConkie said. "We feel that this is the most affordable, possible way that we can reform the system, change it and realize the major cost avoidance in years to come."

The cost of DORA was its downfall in 2004. The bill passed through both the House and Senate with enthusiastic bipartisan support, but it was never funded.