State's corrections system could be
at the TIPping point

By Barbara Sella

In a June 2005 column, I wrote about several provisions in the state budget that offered hope for a change in Wisconsin's corrections policy.

One of these, popularly known as TIP (Treatment Instead of Prisons), is aimed at diverting non-violent drug and alcohol offenders from prison to community-based substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities where they can receive professional help with their addictions.

The legislature passed and the Governor signed this bi-partisan provision into law in July. Since then counties have been encouraged to develop drug courts and other innovative programs to deal with the underlying addictions that fuel so much non-violent crime.

Two existing programs highlight the savings that can be achieved, in both dollars and lives. Dane County has operated a drug treatment court since 1996. Those who volunteer for the program attend counseling sessions, submit to random urine screenings, and report regularly to the drug court judge about their progress. Participants who need housing and employment receive additional help.

A 2002 study found that in a two to four year period, only 24% of those who completed Dane County's Drug Court program re-offended, compared with 45% percent for those who declined to enter the program.

The drug treatment court not only decreases recidivism, it saves taxpayers money. The average cost of treating an offender in Dane County's drug treatment court program in 2003 was $17.78 a day, compared with $60.41 in jail or $78.36 in prison.

Milwaukee's Community Justice Resource Center (CJRC), which opened in 2000, is a collaboration between the county House of Corrections and two local social services agencies. Like the program in Dane County, participants receive counseling, random drug testing, job training, as well as GED and parenting classes. Participants also perform community service based on restorative justice principles. Here too, the results are impressive. Of those who completed the program, 75% did not re-offend after one year.

The newly signed TIP law makes it possible for every county in Wisconsin to operate innovative programs like the two in Dane County and Milwaukee. Unfortunately, however, insufficient revenues may impede this goal. Citing the state's tight fiscal situation, neither the legislature nor the Governor allocated adequate funds to the program.

To ensure that sufficient state resources are made available, a new effort is needed.

What can citizens do? The original TIP legislation made it into the budget thanks to the tireless work of key legislators, criminal justice professionals, reformed ex-offenders, and drug and alcohol treatment providers.

Perhaps most important, it succeeded thanks to the organizing power of faith-based, grass-roots groups, as hundreds of men and women from 15 religious denominations across the state became educated and active on the issue. Catholics were among them. As the Wisconsin Bishops wrote in their 1999 pastoral, "Public Safety, the Common Good, and the Church: A Statement on Crime and Punishment in Wisconsin," corrections policies should aim at being redemptive and restorative, not merely punitive.

The legislature and the Governor should be commended for supporting the concept of TIP, and they need to hear that citizens support them in taking the next step: putting sufficient state money behind it.

One recent study estimates that spending $11 million a year on TIP could save the state $26 million annually. Wisconsin cannot afford to be penny wise and pound foolish.

For more information and brochures on the TIP campaign, contact me at Barbara@wisconsincatholic.org.

(Sella is associate director of Education and Social Concerns of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the civil arm of the state's five diocesan bishops.)