Travis County Commissioners Court
January 21, 2009
Item 16
>> 16 is to review and approve requests providing applications and contracts and permissions to continue. A is request to authorize criminal courts to continue the drug court program grant position through the end of January '09, this allows continuation of the grant program until a fully executed contract can be completed and 16 b request to authorize civil courts to continue the family drug treatment court program grant position through the end of January '09, this allows continuation of the grant program until a fully executed contract can be completed. Commissioner eckhardt?
>> there were two issue that's the basketup raised for me, both of these programs are absolutely excellent by everyone's estimation, my concern actually is in the metrics that we use to track its performance and both instances in the first there is no indication of -- of -- there's no performance metric tracking the recidivism rates of the individuals involved, although by all accounts it does have a profoundly positive effect on our recidivism. In the second instance there is a metric tracking recidivism but it is not -- not compared against a control group which I think would be very valuable. These kinds of programs are -- are what's needed in our criminal justice system considering our high incarceration rate. I understand that the courts as well as criminal justice planning are both working toward a -- toward a definition of recidivism to track for all of our programs so we can prove up the success of these pilots at the state level and export these good ideas.
>> judge, can I say I totally agree with everything ms. Eckhardt has said. I think it's something we can all be proud of here in Travis County and thanks to leadership by you guys that we lead the nation in being on top of this program that -- that issue -- the rest of the nation by the way has 500,000 non-violent marijuana offenders rotting in jail right now. I don't know who thinks we can afford that. But it's -- time is long since passed where we could afford to do that to our own citizens. So we're on the right track here in Austin. The rest of the nation as usual needs to catch up with us, thank you all. The -- if this matches state federal dollars I think we ought to get whatever benchmarks we can out of them. I would chat with them and see exactly how we leverage that.
>> we are trying to prove up their success. In a way that -- that our state government finds particularly useful.
>> but on these two today we use county money to continue the programs until money has arrived -- from state or federal. Is there a motion?
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, January 21, 2009 2:03 PM