Actress Melanie Griffith rolled up her sleeves last Friday, but not so she could leave handprints in the concrete outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She was in St. Louis, hoping to use her celebrity to make a different kind of impression.

Ms. Griffith is a recovering alcoholic and substance abuser. She was here, along with retired Army Gen. and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey to support a national campaign that seeks to expand so-called drug courts. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., had been in town for the same purpose the day before.

Why? Drug courts work. Communities fed up with drug-related crime should take notice. So should states fed with the expense and futility of overflowing prisons.
Drug courts have been a part of St. Louis’ legal landscape for more than a decade, and there is compelling evidence that they are paying off.

These are the special tribunals organized to provide an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders whose crimes involve drug abuse or addiction. The concept is straightforward:

Defendants diverted to drug court are given a chance at drug treatment. The drug court and its professional staff connect them with services and provide structure, supervision and accountability through the process.

Drug court participants must successfully complete an intensive program of individual and group counseling and other treatment. They also must submit to frequent drug tests. In return, they receive job placement, housing and mental health and other medical assistance. They make regular appearances before a judge, with a caseworker in tow to ensure that they move forward on the road to recovery, and they are monitored every step of the way.

Cynics may believe this is hopeless. But they are wrong. What’s hopeless — and horrifically expensive — is the revolving door of drug dependency, crime, incarceration, release and an immediate return to drug abuse.

An independent audit of the first seven years of St. Louis’ adult felony drug court compared 219 of its “graduates” with 219 criminal defendants charged with comparable drug crimes who went through the ordinary probation process.

The drug court involved a bigger up-front investment — $7,793 per graduate compared to $6,344 for regular probationers. But over the next four years, the investment paid off big. Only about 11 percent of those who successfully completed drug court were charged with a subsequent drug offense. Forty-five percent of those who went through the usual probation process were charged with a subsequent offense.

Drug courts most commonly are used in big cities, but a study published in April by the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center estimated that, nationally, a roughly equal number of rural and suburban offenders would make good drug-court candidates. Only about 55,000 of the 1.4 million offenders who fit the profile of a good drug court candidate are being served.

That’s why Ms. Griffith, Mr. McCaffrey and Ms. McCaskill were meeting here with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. They are pushing to take “drug courts to scale.” That is, expand them to meet demand.

Mr. McCaffrey poses this political test: “Do we believe our rhetoric” when we claim as a nation that we want to end drug dependency and all the damage that it causes?

He suggests this challenge to our presidential candidates: Double the capacity of drug courts during your first term in office. That seems like an attainable goal, one that would bring rhetoric closer to reality, saving money, lives and families in the process.