The Adult Recovery Court program and the newer Aftercare program is successful and director Brad Price says it is saving the county money.
At the County Corrections Partnership meeting Monday night, Price gave a presentation on the programs and informed the commissioners of the progress.
“We started in July of 2004 and as of today, we have admitted 711 individuals into this program,” said Price. “This program is a volunteer program for individuals that have substance abuse problems and they want to get done with that problem. We give them treatment. We are like probation on steroids. We put them on house arrest with a GPS monitor, treatment classes and test them three to four times every week. They have no idea when they are going to be drug tested. It is a random call where they call in every day to see if they are drug tested so they have no idea.”
Price explained that out of the 711 people who have entered the program, 132 of them dropped out. There is an application process to get into the program and not everyone is admitted. Price says the way they look at is they ask if they took away the drugs would this person be a criminal. If the answer is no they enter the program, but if it is yes they are not accepted.
“If they would be a criminal if we took away the drugs we don’t want them because we would just be wasting federal, county and state funds,” said Price.
The graduation rate for this program is at 77.5%.
“Out of those individuals we have so far graduated 427 individuals. It is an 18-month program and of those 427, 96 of them have reoffended. This is from 2004 until today, I track them through NCIC to see if they have been arrested or charged with a DUI or whatever. So 96 of them have reoffended. Out of those 427 people, 331 of them have graduated from the program and have not reoffended,” said Price.
Price started doing the aftercare program in 2020 which is the court's own version of parole where they keep up with graduated individuals.
“This is just an extra something instead of giving it to probation,” said Price.
They currently have 69 individuals in the Aftercare program. The client pays a $45 per-month probation fee. Price says once the case manager is paid, the fee generated from the clients results in $10,740 going back to the county general fund. He also said doing in-house drug testing and GPS monitoring allows $10,000 back in the general fund. The program is also operating on grants that pay for the Adult Recovery Program without any contribution from Warren County.
“If it is working, it’s working. For example before we started doing the drug testing for the Sheriff’s Department, I think they were paying $42 for a drug test. We are charging $16.50. So what a savings to a county right there,” said Price.
