Supervisor Donates $40,000 Needed to Start Drug Court Program

Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman has donated the final funds necessary to launch a program that will offer treatment instead of jail to some nonviolent drug law offenders.

The program, which officials said signals a shift from the war-on-drugs’ emphasis on incarceration, was supposed to begin last month at the downtown Hall of Justice. But after that building was severely damaged by the Northridge earthquake, officials found themselves short of funds to relocate the program to another county-owned building across from Union Station.

That’s when Edelman stepped in and contributed $40,000 from his office discretionary funds--enough to pay the electricity bill and other operating costs of the new site for a year. “It’s going to reduce jail overcrowding, and probably more importantly, people who are addicted to drugs will have an opportunity to get some treatment,” Edelman said.

Now scheduled to begin at the end of April, the program is based on the highly touted Drug Court developed with the support of U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno when she was Miami’s chief prosecutor. It will offer people arrested for the first time on felony drug possession charges the option of enrolling in a treatment program with regular testing, job training and acupuncture to curb addiction. It may eventually be offered to repeat offenders.

Currently, the county has only enough funds to treat 125 drug addicts for four months and must seek more than $300,000 from the federal government to keep the program running for the rest of the year. But Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Stephen Marcus, who will preside over the Drug Court, is optimistic that the county will not only obtain enough funds to expand the pilot project, but eventually be able to establish several regional Drug Courts.

The Drug Court could end up saving the county thousands of dollars in jail costs, officials said. One in four inmates in county jails are doing time for drug possession or sales, according to the Sheriff’s Department. The county spends about $25,000 for every inmate who remains in custody for a year.

The Drug Court program differs from existing drug diversion programs that offer only educational classes, not treatment. Also, unlike older programs that returned relapsed participants to jail immediately, the new Drug Court tolerates up to two relapses before addicts are jailed, Marcus said.

In Miami, the program is in its fifth year and less than a fifth of its 6,500 participants have been rearrested, said Dorothy Fletcher, assistant director of the Dade County Office of Substance Abuse.