Published: July 10, 2009 08:19 am      

W.Va. crimes linked to substance abuse cost $333 million

CHARLESTON — From initial police investigations all the way through parole, crimes linked to drug and alcohol use cost West Virginia nearly $333 million, according to a report released Thursday.

The report, compiled by the Prevention Resource Center for the Gov. Joe Manchin-appointed Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being, tracked costs in the criminal justice system from the 2005 fiscal year through the 2008 fiscal year.

The numbers show ballooning costs, with 11 of 12 entities from the courts to police agencies reporting higher costs in 2008 than in 2005. Based on those numbers, the report estimates West Virginia will be spending nearly $500 million on crimes linked to drugs and alcohol by the 2017 fiscal year.

“Substance abuse places an enormous financial burden on West Virginia’s criminal justice system,” the report concludes. “The alarming fact is the burden will continue to grow unless urgent actions are taken to provide the continuum of care necessary to stem this growth.”

The report examines the cost of crimes directly or indirectly linked to drugs and alcohol. Examples of directly linked crimes would be the sale or possession of illegal drugs, while an example of an indirectly linked crime would be committing a robbery to pay for drugs.

In 2008, nearly half the prisoners in Division of Corrections facilities and about two-thirds of those incarcerated in regional jails were there because of crimes linked to drug or alcohol use, the report found.

That year, the Division of Corrections spent about $73.6 million on inmates convicted of those crimes, and the Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority spent $51.4 million — more than half its budget.

“If we just keep doing what we’re doing, things are only going to get worse,” said Wayne Coombs, director for research and development at the Prevention Resource Center. “It’s really draining the resources of the state.”

The expenses aren’t only attached to jails and prisons. The report estimates that municipal, county and state police agencies spent a combined $142 million or so in the 2008 fiscal year on crimes ranging from drug dealing to drunken driving. That’s about half of all the money spent on law enforcement that year.

The new report comes a week after another Manchin-appointed body made recommendations about reducing overcrowding in the state’s 14 prisons and 10 regional jails.

“It’s so evident that just expanding the current system is a failure,” said the Rev. Dennis Sparks, executive director of the West Virginia and a member of the task forced that produced the overcrowding report. “It doesn’t treat people, it only creates more criminals.”

One of the recommendations was diverting inmates with drug or alcohol problems to treatment programs, along with reducing sentences for non-violent criminals. It costs about $28,000 a year to feed and house an inmate, apart from the other costs — court, police, parole — identified by Thursday’s report.

“Nonviolent criminals with substance abuse problems are definitely a part of what the governor’s looking at in terms of changes to the prison system,” Manchin spokesman Matt Turner said. “Just being tough and giving those people more prison time has not really worked.”

The Prevention Resource Center plans to release other reports over the next year documenting the cost of substance abuse for the state’s health, education and overall economic systems, Coombs said.