Fund It Walk the Talk on Parolees

FUND IT WALK THE TALK ON PAROLEES

For several years now, the Kansas Department of Corrections has been advocating a new approach to parolee reintegration in communities. The idea: help former inmates succeed on the outside by providing them with alcohol and drug abuse treatment and other community-based support services.

It's a commonsense approach that treats the causes of crime, rather than just the symptoms. But it turns out that state officials aren't walking their talk.

As a recent Eagle article by Tim Potter revealed, at the same time correcti ons officials have been pushing community-based drug treatment, the state has slashed budgets for those same programs.

The drug program budget for fiscal year 2005 was only $155,000 in a $29 million budget. And in the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, the department budgeted no money at all for drug abuse programs. It's a glaring disconnect between words and actions.

In fact, funds for all facility- and community-based offender programs have decreased by 43 percent since 2000, according to a 2006 department report.

Granted, officials have put more resources into programs for sexual offenders, and that's appropriate and important. But drug treatment also must be a high priority.

This issue is especially important for Wichita, which receives the majority of released inmates in Kansas - 1,317 of the 5,612 parolees now in the state live in Wichita. There aren't enough local drug treatment programs to fill the gap. And some of them weren't designed to meet the special needs of parolees. It's encouraging that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has proposed a $460,000 boost in funding for treatment programs for fiscal 2008. The Legislature reportedly is inclined to approve it.

But even with that increase, the funding is still inadequate and below funding levels of the late 1990s. The state can't afford to ignore these programs. Roughly two-thirds of offenders have addiction problems, according to experts, and in many cases, alcohol and drug abuse fuel criminal activity.

Peter Ninemire, a former inmate who now helps ex-offenders and their families, called drug treatment programs "the best anti-crime tool that we have." But he also stressed that long-term interventions often are needed - and that takes funding.

Otherwise, it's just so much talk.

Is Kansas serious about this effort or not?

- For the editorial board, Randy Scholfield