It's just that all of a sudden people realize that you take these people and lock them up, and they go back out and they get locked up again, and they go out again. It's what we've been saying in this space for years, and it's gratifying indeed to hear this kind of talk in the Legislature this year. What Santiago is talking about is the relationship between drugs and crime in Hawaii, and the futility of warehousing criminals with drug problems in prisons. But even if nothing much happens this year, there's been a welcome, wholesale change in thinking just since last year. This money would finance programs for the general public, not for prisoners, but senators are beginning to realize that drug users who receive treatment before they commit felonies represent a huge savings to taxpayers.
Prison is far more expensive than treatment.
This bill is the Cadillac of the drug-treatment vehicles in the Legislature. Instead of introducing treatment into existing facilities, which would be cheap, it proposes a new facility specially designed for treatment. Give us more of this kind of thinking. It's right on. The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co .