It has been a long road. I’ve found that legislation that is going to survive this process, requires that.
Yesterday House Judiciary & Rules Committee introduced a bill
I’ve been working for months with co-sponsors to negotiate and
finalize. The bill allows judges, in certain cases, to use drug
treatment focused alternatives to Mandatory Minimum Sentences.
Specialists with the Department of Corrections have told our committee
that prison
sentences of six months to a year coupled with supervised parole which
includes
treatment is the best way to ensure people recover from meth addiction
or addiction to
drugs.
Prison is a pretty
violent place. Violence can be contagious, like desperation. We have
struggled as a state to offer women and men a chance of recovery and
better chances of returning
to their families as productive members of society. It is becoming more
clear that, for non-violent offenders, whose main issue is addiction,
more than eight months in prison can be counter productive. Our system
struggles to ensure that offenders leave prison less likely to
return to drugs or commit other crimes. Treatment and parole
supervision with random drug testing and resources for re-lapse are
important for that. With more hard work, Lynn Luker, Raul Labrador,
Phil Hart and I will try to make this change to allow judges to use
these types of treatment focused sentences where appropriate. We are
now joined by co-sponsors Dick Harwood and Eric Anderson. Having Senate
co-sponsors would have been wise as the Senate Judiciary and Rules
Committee is where the largest hurdle may be.