![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Teresa-Kim-Tenorio-150x150.jpg\")
Kim-Tenorio, who handles the CNMI Drug Court, said the cost for an individual to complete the Drug Court program depends on the participants because some of them require more drug testing, more treatment, etc. That cost averages at about $7,500, she said, but could go as high as $11,000. On the other hand, the program\u2019s success rate is 85%.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the folks that are graduating\u2014at least 85%\u2014 are not coming back into the criminal justice system,\u201d Kim-Tenorio said. <\/p>\n
In comparison, the judge said, she constantly asks DOC how much it spends to house inmates and they would tell her it\u2019s $31,000 a year for a healthy inmate. \u201cSo when you think about incarcerating someone for 10 years, for example that\u2019s $310,000 versus $7,500,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kim-Tenorio believes the cost saving is even more because all of their participants have children. \u201cI can think of maybe one or two that don\u2019t have kids, but [almost all] have kids. They have parents, their siblings, people that have cut them out of their lives for so many years. And they\u2019re making amends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kim-Tenorio said they make sure that participants get a job or get an education equivalent to GED (high school) if they don\u2019t have it already. \u201cWe make sure that they have housing. And you know, we start them out with [Northern Marianas Housing Corp.], food stamps, Medicaid and so forth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, not all of them but many of them find full-time jobs and they start supporting themselves and paying taxes, Tenorio said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo its impact is larger than just seeing all this one person,\u201d the judge said. <\/p>\n
House Committee on Ways and Means vice chair Rep. Ivan A. Blanco (R-Saipan), who presided over the hearing, said in summary the Judiciary\u2019s request was more than its 2019 budget level.<\/p>\n
Blanco said the Judiciary is requesting an additional $5 million, which would include, among others, additional employees and funding, wage increases, and funding for the Mental Health Court, which is slated to be launched in July this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It costs an average of about $7,500 for anyone to successfully complete the CNMI Judiciary\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":345338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[9364],"class_list":["post-345289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-drug-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}