In 2010, Sullivan County launched a bold gamble favoring rehabilitation over retribution:
TRAILS, which stands for Transitional Reentry and Inmate Life Skills. Rather than build a new jail estimated at $42 million, the county opened a $7.1 million treatment-centered facility where eligible inmates with substance use disorders could undergo a 90-day treatment course to help them stay clean and out of prison. The goal wasn’t leniency, but
rather to help these people, our neighbors, get their act together and reenter society with a
fighting chance. Nothing is perfect, but TRAILS came close. The county’s own figures credited it with cutting recidivism from about 68% to 20%. Despite this resounding success, the County recently revisited TRAILS and the future of the program is at stake, as the Valley News reported earlier this summer.
According to the County Delegation’s July 2 meeting minutes, a $500,000 cut to the TRAILS program was adopted to phase out the program over the course of the fiscal year. This was done despite no financial analysis and a previous commitment toward discussing one. This was recognized by a few of the delegation members but disregarded by the majority who continued with the vote. The rationale was that TRAILS could be replaced with a drug court program, although officials recognized that the court would not serve the same population and was not ready regardless.
This cut directly impacts the community in concrete ways. For potential TRAILS
attendees, it means fewer paths to recovery, to work, and to their families. For the community at large, it means a direct impact on public safety since people who complete treatment are much less likely to return to jail. This also means more public money spent on ER visits, first responders, court proceedings and jail facilities. No matter how you look at the cut, it is a lose-lose as it hurts the community carrying the financial burden and those in recovery. Department of Corrections Superintendent Shawn Coughlan made this last point painfully clear during the July 2 hearing, where he noted the cut reverts the jail to “2008 staffing,” where security handled mental health and addiction crises. Healthcare should be handled by healthcare providers; anything less is ineffective and a disservice to the people of the county.
To be completely transparent, TRAILS doesn’t break even on a cost-per-bed perspective
at current enrollment. The program has 24 beds but often runs below capacity due to insufficient referrals. When enrollment falls, the fixed cost of the program outweighs the cost of future incarcerations it prevents. This is by far the strongest argument for the cut, and it is a weak one.
That figure only measures the program’s cost against the future jail stays it prevents. It ignores everything else a returning offender costs the community. Those costs are real, only harder to see on a budget line. Independent researchers who do try to measure them, like the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, find that treatment programs like TRAILS return about $9.50 for every $1 spent.
For some local context, Superintendent Coughlan estimates TRAILS has saved the county
roughly $6 million since 2010. That’s a considerable chunk of change the delegation seems to have overlooked.
Measured against jail beds alone, TRAILS looks expensive. Measured against what it
saves the community, it doesn’t. Any program not operating at capacity will look costly per
person. This isn’t a sign TRAILS doesn’t work or isn’t worth the cost. It’s a sign we’re not using it properly. The good news is that a change in how inmates are referred and adding additional avenues to the program could correct this problem quickly.
Even if you take the perspective of the jail bed cost analysis and decide to go through
with ending TRAILS, the cut doesn’t save that much money. A vast majority of the TRAILS
budget goes toward clinical staff and a case manager that are needed for the jail regardless of the recovery program. As such, ending TRAILS removes all of the good it did while retaining almost all its costs.
With all of that in mind, the delegation should revisit the TRAILS vote and weigh it
against the financial and community costs it didn’t consider the first time. The program does real social good, and it offers the county a genuine path to mitigating future costs. At the very least, the delegation owes its constituents the financial analysis it committed to before dismantling the program. Hopefully, this analysis will help them appreciate the gravity of their decision and consider the socially and economically more sensible way forward.
Thomas Raymond is an Upper Valley resident closely following TRAILS. He lives in Lebanon.