Tyler

By CASEY KNAUPP
Staff Writer

After just a year and a half, Smith County’s Alternative Incarceration Center has saved the county more than $1 million.

The AIC is a probation program in which nonviolent offenders report daily, undergo treatment and get jobs.

Since it began in Smith County on Dec. 28, 2006, the AIC has saved the county a projected $1,870,371 in what it would cost housing Smith County inmates here and in other county jails.

AIC supervisor Greg Parham sent out an update report to county commissioners, judges and other officials on Tuesday. In the e-mail, he said the AIC just completed the third quarter of the fiscal year and, in the third quarter, the county saved a projected $678,153. With one quarter to go in the fiscal year, the projected total savings of the AIC is $1,870,371, he reported.

The AIC, which began with seven people, was first budgeted for 100 people and began as a pilot program for one year, but this year has been expanded to serve 200.

Through July, the program has served 217 offenders, the report shows.

“We are making a difference,” Parham has said, adding they were providing the tools offenders would not have otherwise had.

The supervision efforts of the program are goal oriented toward:

The offenders placed in the AIC would have gone to jail or prison otherwise for nonviolent offenses. The program is not designed to include those who would have received probation anyway, 114th District Judge Cynthia Stevens Kent has said.

Some offenders who are not eligible for the program have also been helped to expedite their cases and get them out of jail sooner, Judge Kent said.

Judge Kent said they work hard to screen people for candidates for the program. After more than 20 years on the bench, it has opened her eyes about how many violent offenders who are not eligible for the program are in the Smith County Jail, she said.