{"id":31307,"date":"2019-03-18T17:11:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T22:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=31307"},"modified":"2019-03-19T13:50:14","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T18:50:14","slug":"drug-and-mental-health-courts-could-get-more-funding-under-a-bill-advancing-through-oklahoma-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2019\/03\/18\/drug-and-mental-health-courts-could-get-more-funding-under-a-bill-advancing-through-oklahoma-legislature\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug and mental health courts could get more funding under a bill advancing through Oklahoma Legislature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/p>\n

Quinton Chandler \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Drug court participants have to follow strict rules like, making regular court appearances, submitting to drug tests and reporting for group therapy sessions.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Millions of dollars\u00a0to make more room in the state\u2019s drug courts, mental health courts, and community sentencing programs could be a possibility under a bill now being considered by the Oklahoma Senate.<\/p>

State Representative John Waldron wants the Legislature to authorize a new fund to pay for up to 875 additional people to be diverted into treatment programs instead of prison.<\/p>

If House Bill 1416<\/a> becomes law, it would call for the state to deposit into the fund $1 for every private prison inmate each day they are in custody and \u00a0the Department of Mental Health would create rules to manage the fund.<\/p>

Based on the current private prison population — Waldron estimates the fund would collect about $2.15 million from the state. He hopes private donors would match that amount to create a budget of $4.3 million in additional money for the state\u2019s treatment programs, such as drug court and mental health court.<\/p>

Waldron said the bill targets the state\u2019s ballooning prison population. As long as people are sent to private prisons in Oklahoma — the legislator wants to send extra money to prison diversion programs.<\/p>

People who graduate Oklahoma’s drug court and mental health court programs are significantly less likely to go to prison.<\/p>

A spokesperson for the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services said putting one person through drug court costs $5,000 per year. Department of Corrections data suggests in fiscal year 2018 the cost to imprison a single person ranged between $16,900 – $36,000.<\/p>

According to the Department of Mental Health 82 percent of people who entered Oklahoma\u2019s prison system for nonviolent crimes during fiscal year 2017 suffered from addiction or mental illness.<\/p>

House Bill 1416 passed the House of Representatives 80-7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A state legislator believes lawmakers should invest more money in programs designed to treat underlying problems and steer people away from prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":31313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"page-noFeature.php","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[762,1039,1037,890,766,1038],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31307"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31316,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31307\/revisions\/31316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}