It took guts for David Roach to stand before the Barton County Commission Monday morning. The 55-year-old Great Bend man has had his share of problems with drugs, alcohol and the law over the years.
But, he said, he is clean and is now a role model for his granddaughter. He attributes his success to his being a part of Central Kansas Community Corrections which supervised his parole.
In the past year, CKCC has served 105 parolees. Of those, 24 (23 percent) had their paroles revoked and wound up in jail. But, 81 (77 percent) followed through and have stayed out of prison.
Those are pretty good numbers.
“Before, I just didn’t have anybody to push me in the right direction,” he said. “Corrections turned my life around.”
He spoke as part of CKCC Director Amy Boxberger’s presentation on her agency’s annual year-end outcome report.
Such programs seem to make sense, yet commissioner Jennifer Schartz said the State of Kansas fails to fund them adequately. This is unfortunate.
CKCC and similar programs help keep offenders out of our jails and in our communities where they can be productive members of society.
Prison time, sadly, breeds more prison time. “If I’d gone back to prison, I would have just come out bad,” Roach said. Even though he fought it at first, “they showed me the way to live right” through supervision and counseling.
Prison time is also more costly than the alternative. This should be a no brainer.
This sort of preemptive spending must be a priority or else our already over-burdened judicial system will only become more backlogged.
Dale Hogg